Blazing Shield... What's the Point?

Mashille · May 2023

When you first read this Ability, on the surface it sounds like it could be a really cool ability for PvP. But in reality this ability is entirely worthless and it needs buffing / reworking.

To see if I could get anything out of it, I made a build with 71,000 Max Health.
This resulted in a shield strength of 21,000
In PvP, this is cut to 10,500
The ability reflects 30% of the damage it absorbs, meaning it deals 3150 Damage
In PvP this is cut down to... 1575 Damage (And that's before resistances)

This is literally the HIGHEST possible damage it can ever do.

Yet, while Blazing shield is supposed to be the "Damage" morph. My unbuffed tooltip for Radiant Ward is 4k Damage. Cut down to 2k Damage in PvP. Which is still higher than Blazing Shield...

Please do something about the sad state of this ability.

Inaya1 · May 2023

Before One Tamriel, blazing shield was one of the most powerful skills, it allowed templar tanks to dominate, making everyone around squeal. Therefore, it's just a zos matter of nerfing this forgotten skill so much that no one else will ever use it. But a lot of time has passed, many variations of builds have appeared. It's time to return it to its original values. We also have so many sets for max HP damage. What is the use of them if no one plays dangerous dps tanks? (Except for those who kite around rocks)

Beffagorn · May 2023

Dear Lord, no. PvP does not need "dangerous dps tanks" or any tanks in general, especially in battlegrounds. Wardens healing for 30k with Polar WInd are already far more than enough. Play your fun draining 70k HP tank but never expect it to be a competitive build, because it never should.

Reading this is already giving me Alessia Bridge PTSD from before One Tamriel.

Mashille · May 2023

Beffagorn wrote: »

Play your fun draining 70k HP tank but never expect it to be a competitive build, because it never should.

I'm not saying a 70k heath PvP build should be viable. I'm just using it to showcase how thoroughly useless Blazing Shield is as an ability.

Kisakee · May 2023

Mashille wrote: »

Beffagorn wrote: »

Play your fun draining 70k HP tank but never expect it to be a competitive build, because it never should.

I'm not saying a 70k heath PvP build should be viable. I'm just using it to showcase how thoroughly useless Blazing Shield is as an ability.

Only in PvP. And only if you ignore that you're gaining a damage shield too. Which scales with the number of enemies hit. Your logic is flawed in multiple ways.

Mashille · May 2023

Kisakee wrote: »

Only in PvP. And only if you ignore that you're gaining a damage shield too. Which scales with the number of enemies hit. Your logic is flawed in multiple ways.

Let's imagine there are 5 enemies around me, increasing my shield strength by 20%.

That gives me a 12k Shield in PvP, not awful but it will be broken in less than 2 seconds.

The 12k shield will mean Blazing Shield would deal a whopping... 1800 Damage.

Wow, that's almost as much damage as a Light Attack!!! 😱😱😱

lQrukl · May 2023

The only useful use of this skill after 3+ years on the templar I found is Lokke HM.
It gives you passive Piercing Spear (+10% crit damage) at backbar (case you spam Blazing Spear at frontbar to kill atro) and gives Spear Wall passive at beam phase (Minor Protection)
In any other case, this skill is not worth a slot

mocap · May 2023

Many skills unusable in PvP, so what?

Mashille · May 2023

mocap wrote: »

Many skills unusable in PvP, so what?

Yes, and this is a thread about one of those Skills. Thanks for your input.

Dagoth_Rac · May 2023

I remember playing a Templar tank in 2014 and Blazing Shield doing more damage in 4-man dungeons than the dedicated damage dealers. And I was pretty clueless back then. I was not building for damage or trying to be a hybrid Tank/DPS. My character was just trying to not die. It sort of happened from using what seemed to be the class tanking skills. And then ZOS nerfed it into the ground and it has stayed there for like 8 years.

Jamie_Aubrey · May 2023

You used to be able to just spam this and nuke the 20+ people wailing on you while you ran round a tower

Wow have people been doing that that long

TechMaybeHic · May 2023

Mashille wrote: »

When you first read this Ability, on the surface it sounds like it could be a really cool ability for PvP. But in reality this ability is entirely worthless and it needs buffing / reworking.
To see if I could get anything out of it, I made a build with 71,000 Max Health.

This resulted in a shield strength of 21,000

In PvP, this is cut to 10,500

The ability reflects 30% of the damage it absorbs, meaning it deals 3150 Damage

In PvP this is cut down to... 1575 Damage (And that's before resistances)

This is literally the HIGHEST possible damage it can ever do.

Yet, while Blazing shield is supposed to be the "Damage" morph. My unbuffed tooltip for Radiant Ward is 4k Damage. Cut down to 2k Damage in PvP. Which is still higher than Blazing Shield...

Please do something about the sad state of this ability.

Story time with a bit of history on the game.

Years ago, it was the staple on templar. There was no battle spirit applied to shields; but then there were sorcs who could stack full magicka and run 3 Magicka only based shields, so they could run pure glass but have massive shields. Templars could also stack 2 shields, but 1 based on Magicka scaling, and the other based on health so not as high tooltip; or just stack health and run blazing shield, which was a balance to be made between shield size and offensive capability

ZOS attempted to go after massive sheld stacking a few times by battle spirit reduction, which was enough to sink templar shields which were already lower tooltips in general unless they built entirely into blazing shield. They then also removed major protection from what is now empowering sweeps and about to become yet another useless version this next update. Templars had ZERO viable defensive for years then until they changed living dark to be self target you see today. So even stacking health as a niche build for blazing shield was very limited because range focusing down the shield meant no offensive strength and no real defense while it was down, save for some proc set combo along the way

Then they limited stacking, and they capped all shields based on health to go along with Magicka. You see today that even sorcs with traditional shields are not strong. Templar shields in PvP has been long forgotten.

Sadly; that's how the game goes. They nerf things out of existence entirely; and buff something new generally to far worse levels. Living Dark is still strong for example but it's initial debut, it healed for much more and faster. Other things last for years.

Kisakee · May 2023

Mashille wrote: »

Kisakee wrote: »

Only in PvP. And only if you ignore that you're gaining a damage shield too. Which scales with the number of enemies hit. Your logic is flawed in multiple ways.

Let's imagine there are 5 enemies around me, increasing my shield strength by 20%.

That gives me a 12k Shield in PvP, not awful but it will be broken in less than 2 seconds.

The 12k shield will mean Blazing Shield would deal a whopping... 1800 Damage.

Wow, that's almost as much damage as a Light Attack!!! 😱😱😱

It's an auto hit effect on all enemies around you. How OP do you want a nontarget AOE to be?

ZOS_Icy · May 2023

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic.

Thank you for your understanding.

Dojohoda · May 2023

There was this one guy who made excellent use of the skill. I called him Mr. Sunshine because of the glow around him. This was in 2015 in Black Water Blade, which was my favorite place in the whole game.

So, Mr Sunshine was Emperor and he would saunter up to Fort Ash, glowing. The DC would pile up around him, trying their best to kill him. The rest of us, those who knew what was coming, would be yelling in zone chat to get away, to stooooop. Most of them didn't listen. Then KABOOM, they all dropped dead, all 30 of them, maybe more.

Mr Sunshine would flex like Neo (Matrix) and bend our precarious virtual world. The dead would rez in Ash and run back out to beat on Mr Sunshine again. BOOM and so it went.

Anyhoo, the skill was eventually nerfed into oblivion.

Mashille · May 2023

Kisakee wrote: »

It's an auto hit effect on all enemies around you. How OP do you want a nontarget AOE to be?

Ah yes, I forgot that if any self-cast AOE ability does more damage than a Light Attack then that makes it completely OP.

You're think the game is horribly unbalanced about when you find out about Impulse, Steel Tornado, Inhale, Sap Essence, Burning Talons, Hurricane, Impaling Shard, Arctic Blast, and Blade Cloak.

mocap · May 2023

Currently there is no point to use it in PvP. And there's nothing to discuss.

YandereGirlfriend · May 2023

This morph seems to be crying out for an entire re-work rather than a pass for strictly PvP tuning.

Why does a defensive ability deal damage at all? Such mediocre damage is 100% being factored into the skill's "power budget" which is what holds it back from doing potentially other, more worthwhile things.

IMO, scrap the damage component and let's brainstorm some interesting secondary effects that could be added in instead.

Mrtoobyy · May 2023

I agree with OP this skills would be so cool to have. But it's not viable, either change the skille entirely or buff it.
Both morphs strengths should be increased in PVP imo.

Mashille · May 2023

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

This morph seems to be crying out for an entire re-work rather than a pass for strictly PvP tuning.

Why does a defensive ability deal damage at all? Such mediocre damage is 100% being factored into the skill's "power budget" which is what holds it back from doing potentially other, more worthwhile things.

IMO, scrap the damage component and let's brainstorm some interesting secondary effects that could be added in instead.

I think if I were to redesign the skill it would become an ability that works similarly to Sorcerer's Bound Armaments or Nightblades Assassin's Will but proccing from defence rather than offence.

Blazing Shield:
Gain a Damage Shield that absorbs up to X damage from Direct Damage attacks (Scaling off Max Health). The shield lasts for 6 Seconds. Each nearby enemy increases the shield strength by 5%.

While Active, after being hit by 12 Direct Damage attacks, convert this ability into Blazing Explosion which, when cast, deals 50% of the Absorbed Damage to all Enemies in a 10 Meter radius around you.

Because Blazing Explosion wouldn't proc until being hit by 12 Direct Attacks, it means that you may have to recast the shield 2-4 times before actually getting the Proc, but this would also make the proc effect far more powerful when you eventually can trigger the explosion.

It also means that, because the damage part of the ability is on a recast, it will cost additional resources so there isn't too much value stacked into a single Ability cast. It also keeps the ability theme very much intact.

I also think this adds interesting counterplay, as if you're fighting a Templar who casts Blazing Shield you might want to consider hitting them with some consecutive Light Attacks in order to reduce the damage if their Blazing Explosion.

I think this would be cool, but I'd be interested to hear what others think

danno8 · May 2023

That actually sounds like an oversight on ZoS behalf. If the shield is already halved due to Battle Spirit then that already halves the possible damage output, which means the damage should not be halved again by Battle Spirit.

It's the classic Battle Spirit double dipping. You should actually do a bug report in-game and in the bug report section of the forums if what you describe in your OP is factually correct.

Zama666 · May 2023

What is the point of Battle Spirit if we all get it?

It would make more sense to me if BS was on for a duration during the game then was done - like a potion/food
Or you could activate it via an Ayelid well or something...

gariondavey · May 2023

Imagine if this skill was actually op like crystal slab...

WuffyCerulei · May 2023

The templar shields 100% need major buffs or a complete rework to actually be useful in any scenario. I can easily reach 10k Hardened Ward with Bastion star and like 36k magicka in pvp, but templars need over double that in health to achieve the same thing. That tells me a bit.

James-Wayne · May 2023

I'm just here to remember the good old days of being able to use all skills in the Templar kit.... life was so much more interesting back then!

Janni · May 2023

Zama666 wrote: »

What is the point of Battle Spirit if we all get it?

It would make more sense to me if BS was on for a duration during the game then was done - like a potion/food
Or you could activate it via an Ayelid well or something...

It reduces the volatility of combat, especially in lag. Many attacks would do far more damage than could ever be mitigated so it would be a race to see who gets their one-shot attack in first. Every time. Essentially it slows things down just a bit so that people actually have a chance to play... at least in theory. But we're not here to talk about the issues of balance in pvp so I'll stop there.

Billium813 · June 2023

Ohh Blazing Shield, what a let down. Both Blazing Shield and Unstable Core have been critically over looked over the years and nerf'd into oblivion. Hell, the Templar NPCs in the game that use Eclipse don't even use the REAL Eclipse that players have; they get access to the OG Eclipse cause the latest version is so trash. But I digress, Unstable Core is a topic for another thread... anyway...

I would be interested in hearing the development teams thoughts on Blazing Shield and it's current utilization. As a Templar Tank, Radiant Ward is the obvious go-to in PvE, while the Blazing Shield morph is very under utilized in all content. Comparatively, Radiant Ward does similar damage, but produces a vastly larger shield!

Radiant Ward

42.6k Health -> 27.4k shield w/ ~12 enemies nearby
Deals 3771 damage to each enemy
Costs 3800 Magicka

Blazing Shield

42.6k Health -> 15.8k shield w/ ~12 enemies nearby
Deals 3718 damage to each enemy after shield is fully hit down by enemies
Costs 4060 Magicka

Does the development team see strong usage of the Blazing Shield morph? Similar to how Empowering Chains for DK was seen as under utilized. I would love to see Blazing Shield reworked a bit to improve its PvP usefulness.

My thoughts

Blazing Shield costs way too much for what it does. 4100 Magicka is too expensive for a crappy shield that also does crappy damage. You put the shield on, it immediately pops, and does like 1.5k damage in PvP... such a terrible investment.
It's hit by Battle Spirit twice. The shield is reduced by Battle Spirit, limiting the potential damage output, but then the damage itself is reduced by the opponents Battle Spirit reduction. This is a big PvP issue with any skill that stores up damage, then bursts damage out later. PoTL has a similar issue and ZOS didn't know how to fix it, so they just reduced the damage cap.
Living Dark is just better. For Living Dark, you get the WHOLE 12 second duration AND it costs 400 less Magicka. You end up getting WAY MORE value from Living Dark. Granted it doesn't do damage, but the damage from Blazing Shield is so pitiful that the movement speed debuff is more useful.
Compared to Radiant Ward, it isn't as satisfying to use. Radiant Ward shows the number of enemies that boosting the shield. With Blazing Shield, its really hard to tell if the opponent was in the range to count, or even if they took the damage. The animation is just weak IMO.
The shield scales too low for PvP. Increasing the shield by 4% per enemy really isn't that good! PvP is too fast paced and spread out. You would be lucky to catch 3-4 players in the AOE, given a paltry 12%-16% shield increase... we're talking something like a +500-800 damage shield increase on a 5k shield when you apparently have 3-4 opponents within 8 meters of you... IN PVP. That's just not worth the effort.

Keep in mind that Radiant Ward actually seems to deal MORE DAMAGE, on activation, AND GIVES A BIGGER SHIELD, even in PvP with Battle Spirit, thanks to the +20% scaling per opponent hit. AND, Radiant Ward costs less... smh

ALTERNATIVE!

It seems to me like Blazing Shield should scale the damage shield in a different way from Radiant Ward. Both are trying to scale the shield based on opponents nearby. The Radiant Ward morph seems more applicable to large groups and Blazing Shield could be more applicable to large, boss enemies. Perhaps the damage shield's increased strength could be based on the Max Health of the largest enemy nearby.

New Blazing Shield

Create a tether of solar rays to a nearby enemy with the highest Max Health and gain a damage shield that absorbs up to 4800 damage for 6 seconds. This portion of the ability scales off your Max Health. The shield's strength is increased by 20% of the Max Health of the tethered enemy, up to a maximum of 100k Health.

While tethered, the enemy takes 30% of the damage the shield takes. The tether is broken if the enemy moves 8 meters away from you, or if the shield ends.

Mansquito · June 2023

You could insert 75% of Templar's skills into the title in all honesty. Most of their skills are absolutely garbage 😂

I understand balancing in MMOs is extremely difficult, there will always be metas and fads. However, with ESO it's the sheer gap between the classes and their abilities that really are mind boggling sometimes. The extremeness in approach to nerfing skills is something the devs need to take a long, hard look at as they get it wrong like 95% of the time. What's the point in a class having ~15 different skills each with a couple of morphs for only 3 or 4 to be of any use? Make it make sense!

MindOfTheSwarm · June 2023

Used to be OP before the nerf. Now it’s useless. Not sure what they could do to change it. It can’t be an aura DoT due to Solar Barrage… I mean it could but I am not sure about aura bots being healthy for the game. Or it could simply blow up on expiration like it already does, but for a flat amount that is better than it currently is without it being OP like it was.

Reverb · June 2023

I really miss the days of Blazing Shield being good. I used to slot it on every build, pve and pvp. Now it’s need years since I even bothered to put a skill point into the class shield. It’s pointless, like most of the Templar toolkit at this point.

usmcjdking · June 2023

This skill has been dead for quite some time - there is almost no synergy since the Templar's health based heal is literally the worst in the game. And even IF you go all in on Blazing Shield and make absolutely zero effort to go into Radiant Ward's damage, it's only marginally better.

IMO the base skill needs to be reworked. Sun Shield should only absorb like 50% incoming damage, which would allow templar to make use of its HOTS comparative to a shield that pops almost instantly in PVE and PVP. Radiant Ward is fine as is - reduced cost is great and increased shield size for enemies hit make it fairly attractive in PVE where shields are useful. Blazing Shield should not lose the primary damage on cast, it should be in addition to the shield pops damage.

BS troll tanks won't be hyper-effective because the shield won't be popping every second unless they are taking enormous damage, but the skill will have value on Templar and will give Templar a bit more punch when going all-in on the jabathon.