Hardened Ward heal making it to live is a mistake and needs to be changed

StaticWave · March 23

Bushido2513 wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

make the other team have more wardens

Great now nobody dies on any team. This is why 1v1 is still relevant and often shows things more clearly. It removes obfuscating factors such as team skill, cross healing, and dedicated supports.

But here's the thing, 1v1 is what percentage of pvp? Cyro, IC, and BGs are where you get most of your action and anyone knows you're lucky to get a 1v1 and have it stay a 1v1.

The game is clearly oriented towards battles with any number of opponents on the regular.

In this game it's much easier and more common to have battles that grow in opponents vs shrink in opponents. This is why we have things like battle markers that show where the fight is and now callouts to let you see in chat who is killing who.

They want you to fight in groups!

This is not to say that there aren't a lot of problems with group fights because there are but that's really the only place you will get balance changes if any.

In 1v1 the shield is clearly very powerful but in gvg I've seen it be dominant and also be not more powerful than many other things.

Group v Group is the only balance ZOS is using so while I see the points of others I'm going to say we can't ignore this as well.

I could argue that a Sorc that’s self sufficient and doesn’t always need a healer is a great asset. It means the healer in his team will be able to heal other players who need it more.

Miracle19 · March 23

Bushido2513 wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Jsmalls wrote: »

But let's not pretend that a nightblade and other classes with RaT aren't doing the same thing

no NB is surviving solely on Healthy Offering spam the way sorc survives solely on Ward spam

Right??? It’s such absurd argument to make.

Nobody is denying that other classes can also have incredible survivability, but it requires stacking multiple HoTs with a burst heal, high resistances, movement speed, and still be at a certain HP level to survive a standard burst combo.

Then you have magSorc with Ward, and when under the hands of decent players like @Jsmalls, @MetallicMonk, etc, Sorc just looks so unfair compared to players of the same caliber on other classes.

I mean, just look at @Jsmalls’ build. His magsorc in No CP has 53k mag, 30k resistance, decent recovery with Torc, and decent movement speed from Hurricane. Even with only 24k HP, he can probably tank damage from multiple below average - average players, can still comfortably tank damage from a good player, and has the movement speed and resources to reposition when pressured by multiple good players. What are people going to do when he Streaks 5x in a row with decent movement speed to run away? NB definitely can’t survive that, and neither can Warden or any class in a full damage build, and definitely not with 24k HP lol.

So I watched the video and when you look at the KD in there it's not like he was in a room full of killers so honestly I'm not surprised at the result.

But I will say yes this is a case where a good player can make a build really work that a lot of people probably couldn't.

Now this is a more extreme example and I'll basically say that yes if several people end up doing this same thing then we have a problem. The only caveat that I'll add is that due to the low kd ratio this isn't exactly an example of good players going after another good player. Everyone would have to probably have gone after jsmalls to actually kill him.

You keep saying with one skill and that's not true, take streak off his bar and he's dead, that's it no question!

Yes ward is doing an amazing job but he cannot stand there and just take it without reposition and at times being offensive. I kept seeing him run from you, it wasn't like he was just standing there the whole time.

So yes a nb with healthy offering and shade can achieve the same result at 20k health, I've seen it and know of a player that gets a lot of kills and doesn't die often because he makes excellent use of shade.

Nope this isn't apples to apples but that's the point, each class has things it's great at and to make a comparison you would have to also say how well do these two classes perform when built to their best spec?

At the end of the day all we really get to see is KD ratio. That's the real metric, damage, healing, etc don't really matter because at the end of the day we just need to know is this spec capable of easily killing way more than it gets killed?

So in the case of the video Jsmalls killed and didn't get killed so ok that qualifies right? Yes but now we go to the next part, is it easily repeatable by other players with less skill? If the answer is yes and we start seeing 24k health sorcs everywhere then yes I'm worried.

But honestly what I saw in the video is that yes in the hands of a good player amongst not as many good players that aren't targeting that player then yes it's strong.

Now get him in a lobby full of vets, give one team a warden healer, make the other team have more wardens, hard hitting nbs, or any other strong combo and the result wouldn't likely be the same.

So the video is mildly interesting and I'm not ready to shut it down and deny anything. I've been saying all this time that the regulation to something like this is players recognizing it and knowing when they should all target it, that's what keeps things like this somewhat in check. The players I saw in this video didn't seem to have much damage or ability to work well together as evidenced by the lower kd numbers.

I think two good players targeting jsmalls would have killed him fairly easily. Yes he can streak five times but there were also a few places in the video where he could have been caught by the right combos that just weren't there.

So I appreciate the video and will say that for me it gives at least something to watch out for more of.

As pictures, 2 properly built sources(me and constine), are very difficult to kill because of the changes regardless of specs. He's full dmg while mine does a lot of group healing.

Does this help?

Bushido2513 · March 23

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

But here's the thing, 1v1 is what percentage of pvp?

More than you think, many scenarios can even be fought as a series of 1v1s.

I've been playing the game for some years and several of my characters earned the duelist title back before your characters could have your titles. I've also had a good share of 1v1s in open world but I also have seen that these days because of how the game is built most everyone rolls with backup now.

1vx is definitely not supported in this game and is left to those who are willing to try enough times to make it happen until they get that right group of potatoes who just happened to not build tanky or have a healer in the group. Still possible but way more rare than it used to be.

Honestly group play is the only place where it makes sense to try to balance the game when you think about it because look at what happens if you balance for 1v1

First of all it's a lot of scenarios of skill combinations, gear combinations, player skill, etc to take into account but a bigger point I just though of is that if you balance for the 1v1 everyone just has to group anyway because they would only be strong enough to take on one other person by the nature of the balance. This is vs how it currently is where at least you have a chance of rolling solo and dealing with multiple attackers.

I could honestly go for either scenario but I see for ZOS it's easier to just do some limited balance here and there and let gvg sort it out and 1v1 suffer. If that's what they are going to do I'm going to play the game they give me.

Balance should always be a point of discussion in this game but in this case until I see several jsmalls running around easily I'm willing to be open to the idea that this change is just better suited for gvg open world as it was meant to be.

Miracle19 · March 23

Bushido2513 wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

But here's the thing, 1v1 is what percentage of pvp?

More than you think, many scenarios can even be fought as a series of 1v1s.

I've been playing the game for some years and several of my characters earned the duelist title back before your characters could have your titles. I've also had a good share of 1v1s in open world but I also have seen that these days because of how the game is built most everyone rolls with backup now.

1vx is definitely not supported in this game and is left to those who are willing to try enough times to make it happen until they get that right group of potatoes who just happened to not build tanky or have a healer in the group. Still possible but way more rare than it used to be.

Honestly group play is the only place where it makes sense to try to balance the game when you think about it because look at what happens if you balance for 1v1

First of all it's a lot of scenarios of skill combinations, gear combinations, player skill, etc to take into account but a bigger point I just though of is that if you balance for the 1v1 everyone just has to group anyway because they would only be strong enough to take on one other person by the nature of the balance. This is vs how it currently is where at least you have a chance of rolling solo and dealing with multiple attackers.

I could honestly go for either scenario but I see for ZOS it's easier to just do some limited balance here and there and let gvg sort it out and 1v1 suffer. If that's what they are going to do I'm going to play the game they give me.

Balance should always be a point of discussion in this game but in this case until I see several jsmalls running around easily I'm willing to be open to the idea that this change is just better suited for gvg open world as it was meant to be.

Unfortunately, that is not how it works in the world of ESO. Balance is determined by community feedback, not actual results from the top players in the game that understand it completely. That's why you have changes like the MDW nerf, which is a non factor in GVG or group play, but very strong 1v1 or even small-scale.

While you may never see a bunch of magsorcs running around using max stat builds and abusing shields, mainly because Sorc is higher APM and newer players can't effectively use it, it is in fact an issue that needs to be addressed.

Jsmalls · March 23

@Miracle19

If that's a group BGs I'm sorry but it's definitely a low MMR one.

Green team wasn't even a factor in that match, and red was slightly more competitive but still has extremely mediocre damage. Could just be they were playing the objective and not trying to kill but... Clearly you're entire team was significantly better than the other two teams.

So going into that match and not dying is very easy....

Bushido2513 · March 23

Miracle19 wrote: »

Unfortunately, that is not how it works in the world of ESO. Balance is determined by community feedback, not actual results from the top players in the game that understand it completely. That's why you have changes like the MDW nerf, which is a non factor in GVG or group play, but very strong 1v1 or even small-scale.

While you may never see a bunch of magsorcs running around using max stat builds and abusing shields, mainly because Sorc is higher APM and newer players can't effectively use it, it is in fact an issue that needs to be addressed.

I'd argue mdw issue was seen all over the place in all content and thus earned a nerf. It was showing up on too many death recaps no matter what the content.

In regards to balance your point is both true and not true. They are at least aware of the feedback but mostly just do what they want as you can also see them ignore the strongest of feedback.

I agree it's technically an issue I just wouldn't say I'm ready to say it's high severity.

Turtle_Bot · March 23

Bashev wrote: »

@Turtle_Bot
What a strange way to calculate with 60-65k health for a PvP builds.

But if you do so then why didn't you included Summon Unstable Clannfear?

I did include it, but I'll quote it here since you clearly didn't read through the spoilers

For fun, I decided to calculate clanfear as sorcs burst heal (since its a health based heal):
Clanfear = 25,910 healing tooltip
Vigor = 26,358 over 5 seconds = 5,271
Total healing tooltip using 1 burst heal and 1 HoT = 31,181
With Battle Spirit active 31,181 x 0.45 = 14,031 healing per second
With block mitigation that is an effective health gain per second of 23,853.
This puts clanfear on par hardened ward as effective health gain but instead of being mostly temporary health that falls away even if the incoming damage stops, it is all actual health gain that is buffed by block mitigation (too bad the pets are horrible to use in PvP).

Part of the reason I calculated things that way was to give ward the best chance to be as high of a value as possible while not stacking damage to values that would be insanely difficult to reach outside of a PvE parsing build (i.e. nothing crazy like 10k+ weapon/spell damage) that would have skewed the results entirely in favor of the damage scaling burst heals.

Even with this particular build that heavily favors ward over heals like HtD, Coag, Offering, etc, Ward is only really ahead of those heals in terms of effective health gain (accounting for block mitigation and battle spirit) by 10-15%, because it was being claimed that ward + crit surge alone was miles ahead of the other burst heals + vigor.

I also showed that switching the tank set to a damage/mixed set such as rallying cry (while keeping the max health because that keeps wards scaling and 45k health (55k with vamp form) is more than feasible for an average build with 2 non-tank sets), reduced sorc down to be effectively the same health gain per second as plar (391 more than bubble plar or 38 more than vigor plar).

What this also showed was that the biggest outlier in the entire game, to the point that it's not even remotely close, is Polar winds (at a whopping 40% ahead of 60k health ward/clanfear). It also showed that players could literally press 1 ability (polar wind) and press nothing else and still have 5k more effective health gain than running any other burst heal (or ward) in the game.

TL//DR:
It showed that ward is slightly ahead and needs some slight reduction on its peak potential but it is nowhere near the most problematic "makes me unkillable" healing skill in the game and is not even remotely close to the skill that actually is that "make me unkillable" button either.

xylena_lazarow · March 23

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Polar winds still have 5k more effective health gain than running any other burst heal (or ward) in the game.

High hp warden supports spamming hp scaling ally heals are their own problem, but in the context of the sorc comparison, none of those high hp wardens are dealing threatening damage on their own, let alone doing it from range.

StaticWave · March 24

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Polar winds still have 5k more effective health gain than running any other burst heal (or ward) in the game.

High hp warden supports spamming hp scaling ally heals are their own problem, but in the context of the sorc comparison, none of those high hp wardens are dealing threatening damage on their own, let alone doing it from range.

I created a 45k HP Warden with Clever/Rallying Cry/Balorgh/SSC just out of curiosity, and here are the stats fully buffed without Continuous:

- 45038 HP
- 16555 mag and 16453 stam
- 1289 mag recov and 1351 stam recov
- 6931 weapon damage before Balorgh
- 7539 pen before Breach
- 30.5% crit chance
- 71% crit damage
- 32089 spell resist and 31363 physical resist back bar
- 3732 crit resist
- 10034 effective weapon power and 11192 effective weapon power with 200 stack Balorgh
- Tooltip for Dizzying Swing with CPs is 13680, and tooltip for Deep Fissure's 1st and 2nd proc are 12219 and 16973
- Tooltip for Polar Wind is 15631 and 3874 for the HoT

I created another Dizzy build for magSorc with Clever/Crafty/Chudan/DDF, and dropped Streak for Encase to mirror Polar Wind, while still keeping Hardened Ward for self defense. Here are the stats fully buffed without Continuous:

- 33578 HP, and effective HP is ~47k HP with Hardened Ward
- 50952 mag and 27053 stam (editor is bugged, so have to manually add the 10%)
- 832 mag recov and 837 stam recov
- 5642 weapon damage
- 11295 pen before Breach
- 34.5% crit chance
- 63% crit damage
- 27580 spell resist and 23950 physical resist back bar
- 2082 crit resist
- 11901 effective weapon power
- Tooltip for Dizzying Swing with CPs is 15323, and tooltip for base Crystal Fragment and its proc are 13195 and 21903, both without the 10% max mag buff from editor bug
- Tooltip for Encase is 12159

So if you compare both builds (which btw I don't think is really a relevant comparison anyways), you can literally see that the Sorc build has more consistent damage, just as high effective HP, a lot more resources to use from and still a decent AoE burst heal that applies Major Maim and Minor Vitality. Since the Sorc isn't using SSC, there is no 40% snare penalty, meaning you will move faster than a Warden in SSC with Major Expedition from Bird of Prey.

Not only that, but the massively higher mag pool and decently higher stam pool means you don't have to heavy attack as often for resources, which translates to more offensive uptime. There's also Dark Deal to cover your stam too, meaning you can run super low regen on this build and still have enough sustain. If you want to bump that damage up even further in a group setting, you could also swap to Wrecking Blow for Major Berserk and get a 12.9k effective weapon power. The Wrecking Blow tooltip would be 16644, a 21% extra damage compared to the Warden's Dizzying Swing tooltip.

In a group setting, the Warden might have better off-heals with Vines + Polar Wind + Lotus to another ally, but the Sorc can just as easily spam Encase several times to heal its entire group to full HP, while also applying Major Maim to its opponents and Minor Vitality to its teammates. Btw, this is if it's going fully max mag. It can just as easily drop Bound Aegis for Echoing Vigor, and still have a higher effective weapon power than a 200 stack Balorgh Warden, while also providing an extra HoT for its teammates.

Oh btw, you can also switch all of that mag to HP and get a 42k HP pool with 41.6k mag, and STILL have a higher effective weapon power than the Warden LOL. So now you're even tankier, and still do more damage, like this:

I don't think an HP Warden build can even compete tbh, not unless you stack multiple of them, but that's a different comparison entirely.

StaticWave · March 24

And if we're going to argue about Sorc in a group setting, then Sorc is legitimately busted when you stack multiple of them. Multiple Sorcs with Ward and Streak are immune to any ground AoE or self-centered AoE like Shifting Standard or Northern Storm, and are also immune to procs like Zaan/Vate staff. Let's also not forget the Curse stacking that ignore block/dodge, and can be easily timed with a simple Streak and multiple Meteors. They are also easy to reapply, so sets like Mara or Wyrd Tree won't do much.

Honestly, I don't know why I have to explain in depth like this. It's so easy to see why Sorc is busted when you buff it like U41 lol.

HowlKimchi · March 24

StaticWave wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Polar winds still have 5k more effective health gain than running any other burst heal (or ward) in the game.

High hp warden supports spamming hp scaling ally heals are their own problem, but in the context of the sorc comparison, none of those high hp wardens are dealing threatening damage on their own, let alone doing it from range.

I created a 45k HP Warden with Clever/Rallying Cry/Balorgh/SSC just out of curiosity, and here are the stats fully buffed without Continuous:

[snip to keep quote short]

I already know people will say that build calculators are one thing and not actually comparable to real gameplay.

StaticWave · March 24

HowlKimchi wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Polar winds still have 5k more effective health gain than running any other burst heal (or ward) in the game.

High hp warden supports spamming hp scaling ally heals are their own problem, but in the context of the sorc comparison, none of those high hp wardens are dealing threatening damage on their own, let alone doing it from range.

I created a 45k HP Warden with Clever/Rallying Cry/Balorgh/SSC just out of curiosity, and here are the stats fully buffed without Continuous:

[snip to keep quote short]

I already know people will say that build calculators are one thing and not actually comparable to real gameplay.

Right, or they'll say "It's different in a fight", when in reality if you get to a certain stat threshold you can make any builds work lol.

Bushido2513 · March 24

StaticWave wrote: »

Honestly, I don't know why I have to explain in depth like this. It's so easy to see why Sorc is busted when you buff it like U41 lol.

That's actually a great point. When something just is what it is you don't really have to explain it because it's all too obvious.

Some agree with you and some don't and I'm not just talking about people that play sorc. I'm seeing people go up against sorc that also feel either way.

I've definitely seen more threads and input over things like DK, NB, oakensoul, Arcanist, procs, tank Meta, etc.

This thread is full of mostly back and forth from the same few people but overall not that many people. So while we know there are many more accounts on the forums, only a few felt this or another thread was worth the time.

So currently I'd say this is an issue technically but one that seems to be lower in priority or value than many others in the game or on general. Which is also kind of a good thing because so far that means it hasn't upset all that many people.

But wait! In the next week the tide might change significantly and I'm curious to see on that one! 😁

xylena_lazarow · March 24

StaticWave wrote: »

Honestly, I don't know why I have to explain in depth like this. It's so easy to see why Sorc is busted

I don't think any of us are still trying to convince Bushido or Smalls, rather I see these posts being important to show the other 10k+ thread viewers that haven't posted, and to keep it on the radar for ZOS. Ward is obviously broken to anyone who understands cmx results and the value of gcds and bar compression, but I get why it's going to be a bitter pill to swallow for the struggling casual sorc player who is happy to finally survive easily on an otherwise difficult high apm class.

StaticWave · March 24

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Honestly, I don't know why I have to explain in depth like this. It's so easy to see why Sorc is busted

I don't think any of us are still trying to convince Bushido or Smalls, rather I see these posts being important to show the other 10k+ thread viewers that haven't posted, and to keep it on the radar for ZOS. Ward is obviously broken to anyone who understands cmx results and the value of gcds and bar compression, but I get why it's going to be a bitter pill to swallow for the struggling casual sorc player who is happy to finally survive easily on an otherwise difficult high apm class.

Yea, an hour after I posted that comment comparing Warden and Sorc, I fought a magSorc who was relatively easy to kill last patch. Once he made a mistake and I got him low, it was pretty much over for him.

The difference was huge this patch. He’s definitely not a bad player, definitely above average, but he didn’t have the offensive pressure like a top tier magsorc. That entire duel I did 4.6k DPS and constantly made him cast ward almost every second. Somehow, he didn’t run out of regen, and could quite literally tank my damage, even when I was spamming execute at low HP. It felt like I was dueling a tank that somehow has damage.

So if an above average player becomes super hard to kill with this buff, what about the top tier players? They won’t die in a 1v1, and certainly won’t die as fast as before in OW. What about the crazy comps that people can theory craft because Sorc is so tanky now? Stacking multiple Sorcs with Echoing Vigors and a support healer is a perfect combination, and almost impossible to counter if I’m being honest. What are people going to do when 5 Sorcs put Curses on 1 player? Cleanse them? They will just reapply the Curses. Block? They got Streak to force you to eat 5 ultimates and 9-10k Frags. Negate them? They have their own counter Negate, and can spread out because they’re ranged and are self sufficient. Gap close them? Good luck, they have enough mag to Streak 10x in a row, while your stam/mag dries up from spamming gap closers trying to reach them.

Idk man, when people really think about ‘s newfound strength with this buff, it’s not hard to see why this class can be broken lol.

Bushido2513 · March 24

StaticWave wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Honestly, I don't know why I have to explain in depth like this. It's so easy to see why Sorc is busted

I don't think any of us are still trying to convince Bushido or Smalls, rather I see these posts being important to show the other 10k+ thread viewers that haven't posted, and to keep it on the radar for ZOS. Ward is obviously broken to anyone who understands cmx results and the value of gcds and bar compression, but I get why it's going to be a bitter pill to swallow for the struggling casual sorc player who is happy to finally survive easily on an otherwise difficult high apm class.

Yea, an hour after I posted that comment comparing Warden and Sorc, I fought a magSorc who was relatively easy to kill last patch. Once he made a mistake and I got him low, it was pretty much over for him.

The difference was huge this patch. He’s definitely not a bad player, definitely above average, but he didn’t have the offensive pressure like a top tier magsorc. That entire duel I did 4.6k DPS and constantly made him cast ward almost every second. Somehow, he didn’t run out of regen, and could quite literally tank my damage, even when I was spamming execute at low HP. It felt like I was dueling a tank that somehow has damage.

So if an above average player becomes super hard to kill with this buff, what about the top tier players? They won’t die in a 1v1, and certainly won’t die as fast as before in OW. What about the crazy comps that people can theory craft because Sorc is so tanky now? Stacking multiple Sorcs with Echoing Vigors and a support healer is a perfect combination, and almost impossible to counter if I’m being honest. What are people going to do when 5 Sorcs put Curses on 1 player? Cleanse them? They will just reapply the Curses. Block? They got Streak to force you to eat 5 ultimates and 9-10k Frags. Negate them? They have their own counter Negate, and can spread out because they’re ranged and are self sufficient. Gap close them? Good luck, they have enough mag to Streak 10x in a row, while your stam/mag dries up from spamming gap closers trying to reach them.

Idk man, when people really think about ‘s newfound strength with this buff, it’s not hard to see why this class can be broken lol.

I'm not even on the new patch yet and as always I played several bgs and a bit of IC.

The interesting thing without sorc being changed that I don't think is fully being taken into account is the number of ways you can already tank out or proc to a win.

The same players that might tank on a sorc and gang up on you are already doing it with other classes.

In a vacuum with specific scenarios you're always going to be right but I or other people can make up just as many specific scenarios and be just as right.

None of us is right all of the time so it's going to come down to overall average which takes time to see.

Bushido2513 · March 24

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

10k+ thread viewers

Could be wrong but I believe that's views not viewers. Some of that likely being that people are just more likely to click on the top few threads even if they have no interest.

xylena_lazarow · March 24

Bushido2513 wrote: »

The interesting thing without sorc being changed that I don't think is fully being taken into account is the number of ways you can already tank out or proc to a win.

Stalemating isn't winning, and if you're dying to "procs" that's a skill issue on you.

HowlKimchi · March 24

Bushido2513 wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Honestly, I don't know why I have to explain in depth like this. It's so easy to see why Sorc is busted

I don't think any of us are still trying to convince Bushido or Smalls, rather I see these posts being important to show the other 10k+ thread viewers that haven't posted, and to keep it on the radar for ZOS. Ward is obviously broken to anyone who understands cmx results and the value of gcds and bar compression, but I get why it's going to be a bitter pill to swallow for the struggling casual sorc player who is happy to finally survive easily on an otherwise difficult high apm class.

Yea, an hour after I posted that comment comparing Warden and Sorc, I fought a magSorc who was relatively easy to kill last patch. Once he made a mistake and I got him low, it was pretty much over for him.

The difference was huge this patch. He’s definitely not a bad player, definitely above average, but he didn’t have the offensive pressure like a top tier magsorc. That entire duel I did 4.6k DPS and constantly made him cast ward almost every second. Somehow, he didn’t run out of regen, and could quite literally tank my damage, even when I was spamming execute at low HP. It felt like I was dueling a tank that somehow has damage.

So if an above average player becomes super hard to kill with this buff, what about the top tier players? They won’t die in a 1v1, and certainly won’t die as fast as before in OW. What about the crazy comps that people can theory craft because Sorc is so tanky now? Stacking multiple Sorcs with Echoing Vigors and a support healer is a perfect combination, and almost impossible to counter if I’m being honest. What are people going to do when 5 Sorcs put Curses on 1 player? Cleanse them? They will just reapply the Curses. Block? They got Streak to force you to eat 5 ultimates and 9-10k Frags. Negate them? They have their own counter Negate, and can spread out because they’re ranged and are self sufficient. Gap close them? Good luck, they have enough mag to Streak 10x in a row, while your stam/mag dries up from spamming gap closers trying to reach them.

Idk man, when people really think about ‘s newfound strength with this buff, it’s not hard to see why this class can be broken lol.

I'm not even on the new patch yet

You mean to tell me you've argued so hard for keeping the current iteration of hardened ward and you haven't even experienced it first hand at all?

SandandStars · March 24

agree they overcompensated and busted magsorc, which really sucks considering it’s been marginal for so long.

Larger issue is the extremely slow and ineffective feedback cycle, paired with an apparent inability to make balanced changes.

I don’t see these two issues ever going away. I don’t see balanced PVP happening at any point

Bushido2513 · March 24

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

The interesting thing without sorc being changed that I don't think is fully being taken into account is the number of ways you can already tank out or proc to a win.

Stalemating isn't winning, and if you're dying to "procs" that's a skill issue on you.

No I mean tank out a win as in just get the opponent to make a mistake and over extend and then get the kill at that point. And not just doing it by yourself but as a team. Enough small damage and ccs from opponents that don't die tends to add up.

Bushido2513 · March 24

HowlKimchi wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Honestly, I don't know why I have to explain in depth like this. It's so easy to see why Sorc is busted

I don't think any of us are still trying to convince Bushido or Smalls, rather I see these posts being important to show the other 10k+ thread viewers that haven't posted, and to keep it on the radar for ZOS. Ward is obviously broken to anyone who understands cmx results and the value of gcds and bar compression, but I get why it's going to be a bitter pill to swallow for the struggling casual sorc player who is happy to finally survive easily on an otherwise difficult high apm class.

Yea, an hour after I posted that comment comparing Warden and Sorc, I fought a magSorc who was relatively easy to kill last patch. Once he made a mistake and I got him low, it was pretty much over for him.

The difference was huge this patch. He’s definitely not a bad player, definitely above average, but he didn’t have the offensive pressure like a top tier magsorc. That entire duel I did 4.6k DPS and constantly made him cast ward almost every second. Somehow, he didn’t run out of regen, and could quite literally tank my damage, even when I was spamming execute at low HP. It felt like I was dueling a tank that somehow has damage.

So if an above average player becomes super hard to kill with this buff, what about the top tier players? They won’t die in a 1v1, and certainly won’t die as fast as before in OW. What about the crazy comps that people can theory craft because Sorc is so tanky now? Stacking multiple Sorcs with Echoing Vigors and a support healer is a perfect combination, and almost impossible to counter if I’m being honest. What are people going to do when 5 Sorcs put Curses on 1 player? Cleanse them? They will just reapply the Curses. Block? They got Streak to force you to eat 5 ultimates and 9-10k Frags. Negate them? They have their own counter Negate, and can spread out because they’re ranged and are self sufficient. Gap close them? Good luck, they have enough mag to Streak 10x in a row, while your stam/mag dries up from spamming gap closers trying to reach them.

Idk man, when people really think about ‘s newfound strength with this buff, it’s not hard to see why this class can be broken lol.

I'm not even on the new patch yet

You mean to tell me you've argued so hard for keeping the current iteration of hardened ward and you haven't even experienced it first hand at all?

Static was already pointing this out when he said I was on console, sorry I thought most everyone would have picked up on that already.

Also if you go back and read everything I said it was mostly a mix of understanding what the game is and how this change overall isn't worse than other things already in the game and my reviews of the different info and video others have posted.

I've also advocated giving the patch time to see what it is and how the community reacts to it.

But this is a great opportunity to see if I'm singing the same tune when I'm affected by it directly.

Bushido2513 · March 24

SandandStars wrote: »

agree they overcompensated and busted magsorc, which really sucks considering it’s been marginal for so long.

Larger issue is the extremely slow and ineffective feedback cycle, paired with an apparent inability to make balanced changes.

I don’t see these two issues ever going away. I don’t see balanced PVP happening at any point

That's one of the points I keep trying to make that nobody seems to buy into. We're not heading towards fixed, we seem to just get ignored until we raise a huge stink then a fix that comes under the idea that we're being saved/helped and therefore should be thankful to be out of the problem they put us into.

xylena_lazarow · March 25

Bushido2513 wrote: »

That's one of the points I keep trying to make that nobody seems to buy into. We're not heading towards fixed, we seem to just get ignored until we raise a huge stink then a fix that comes under the idea that we're being saved/helped and therefore should be thankful to be out of the problem they put us into.

What does this have to do with Ward being broken or not? Appreciate you keeping this thread going.

Bushido2513 · March 25

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

That's one of the points I keep trying to make that nobody seems to buy into. We're not heading towards fixed, we seem to just get ignored until we raise a huge stink then a fix that comes under the idea that we're being saved/helped and therefore should be thankful to be out of the problem they put us into.

What does this have to do with Ward being broken or not? Appreciate you keeping this thread going.

People will always use the most broken thing and right now there are several flavors of broken things. So yes we can talk about ward but if you're not talking about it in the context of what the game really is and the direction it's headed then you're really just talking about what you want the game to be.

I'm not saying people shouldn't say what they want the game to be but I'm just saying when put into context of what the game is, ward is at best slightly overtuned but not really worth more conversation than several other larger issues.

Following ward is really just about following the most current item but that's not really going to help if we're not addressing existing problems.

So I'm pre patch and today I fought a BG which had no maybe two sorcs including myself and it was still pretty miserable due to insert abusable game factor here. Certainly all my bgs aren't like this at all but I see enough of the same cheese to know that even if sorc wasn't buffed people will just go to the next broken thing so therefore I don't have too much issue buffing sorc because hey why shouldn't they get a taste of the broken pie?

I mean really where honestly a hard to kill sorc shooting things at me isn't going to bother me much more than the following.

Hard to kill Arcanist with stuns and immobilizations on cooldown.

High health Wardens with heals and stuns that auto purge curse and ele sus.

Healers that make my damage disappear into the shadow realm.

Nightblades with proc sets that enjoy hard hitting ranged attacks and stealth and high heals when you remove them from stealth.

Templars that can't easily be killed while standing their ground but can (until the shield change) execute me the minute I get low in open field.

Proc sorcs that dot everyone they touch up with every status effect and dot in the game with just a couple of skills.

Oh wait did I mention the healers that make fights an exercise in how much you are willing to punish your hands as you do your rotation just to watch not much of anything happen.

And the list goes on.

So I say that to say that a shielding sorc or set of sorcs just isn't the biggest thing on my list in the larger context of the game. Honestly it would possibly give me a reason to dust off my warden and just mess around with ice shields/sword and board ult just to mess with said sorcs. If I can play around all that other stuff I can play around sorcs too and honestly if you asked me what was the thing I wanted them to commit to working on it wouldn't be the shields, not because I play sorc but because there ae much worse things that bother me wayyyyy more than someone or a group of someones choosing to play sorc. I can easily deal with that issue.

I'd rather them work on things that are much more prevalent that are harder to work around.

Also I'm not seeing overwhelming outcry about this as an issue. It's been a bit back and forth with I think everyone saying sure you could adjust it a bit but it's not insanely over the top either.

xylena_lazarow · March 25

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Also I'm not seeing overwhelming outcry about this as an issue. It's been a bit back and forth with I think everyone saying sure you could adjust it a bit but it's not insanely over the top either.

It's by far the most viewed recent PvP Combat thread, combined with the other two big sorc threads they total 21.3k views, with the next highest being a NB thread with only 2.4k views. That's a lot of interest in the topic.

Have you had a chance to play u41 yet?

Galeriano2 · March 25

IncultaWolf wrote: »

Aces-High-82 wrote: »

IncultaWolf wrote: »

Okay, only took a couple battlegrounds to get a funny clip of me standing still spamming hardened ward and face tanking multiple ultimates before rolling away and popping a potion, streaking, and moving on with the match.

This is a high mmr battleground, no CP enabled, with multiple good 5 star rank pvpers parsing on me. I don't have vigor, or any heals other than hardened ward here, and I have less than 30k hp. What other class can do this? It's pretty silly. Corrosive dragonknights? Naah not even a threat anymore just press the button and sit there and laugh. Reminder that I don't even play sorcerer that much and this is an argonian lol. I also have really high damage and constantly get the highest kdr in my matches.

https://youtu.be/zPcrUAdJ1nQ?si=T95y_rIeazzkDQ8_

As soon as you got focused you had to dodge and break los. Nothing special to see here....

Absorbing 3 ults with one button is fair right? I had no hots, no vigor, no crit surge, and 29k hp, all I did was press hardened ward and it did all of that. Now imagine if I had crit surge and vigor up, I could have sat there for way longer, the point of the video was to show just how strong the shield itself is. NO OTHER CLASS CAN DO THIS, please prove me wrong.

You were blockcasting during the 3 ult part of the fight so I wouldn't call it surviving with one button. You really wouldn't have sat there for longer with vigor and surge. That clip lasts 22 seconds and You only started to recive some focus worth of mentioning in 15th second and the moment that happened You began to melt like a popsicle and drain out of resources pretty quick to the point 7 seconds later You were low on stam, mag and HP while not having CC immunity and potion being on cooldown. Focus You recived during that 7 seconds wasn't even that great. No well executed combos on You and no unblockable stuns just 3 people spamming their abilities in a random manner with arcanist's beam joining at the end. And seeing how they were applying their pressure to You they don't seem as "good 5 star ranking PvPers" or they atleast weren't in that particular moment. Plenty of setups on every class could facetank similar level of focus. As for You, any unblockable stun You would recive during that 7 seconds focus window would mean Your death. You wouldn't even have a stam to keep vigor up and You were not dealing any damage to keep surge healing. I wouldn't be suprised if it would turn out that video was cut 2 seconds before You died.

IV_Deity · March 25

I haven't kept up with the game in maybe a month or so, but I fought a 40k health sorc and this explains why I couldn't kill him...yeah this has been over tuned for sure.

StaticWave · March 25

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Also I'm not seeing overwhelming outcry about this as an issue. It's been a bit back and forth with I think everyone saying sure you could adjust it a bit but it's not insanely over the top either.

It's by far the most viewed recent PvP Combat thread, combined with the other two big sorc threads they total 21.3k views, with the next highest being a NB thread with only 2.4k views. That's a lot of interest in the topic.

Have you had a chance to play u41 yet?

He plays on console and console hasn't gotten the update yet i think

Bushido2513 · March 25

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Also I'm not seeing overwhelming outcry about this as an issue. It's been a bit back and forth with I think everyone saying sure you could adjust it a bit but it's not insanely over the top either.

It's by far the most viewed recent PvP Combat thread, combined with the other two big sorc threads they total 21.3k views, with the next highest being a NB thread with only 2.4k views. That's a lot of interest in the topic.

Have you had a chance to play u41 yet?

So I would guess that some view it just because it's at the top. I personally will click on something just to see what it's about if it's at the top. This doesn't mean I care about what I find in there. Actual metrics on the back end would track how long I kept looking at the content, how many times I looked at it, etc. I'm pretty sure ZOS has access to metrics like this so that they can tell the difference from people just looking at something to how many people were continuously interested in the thread.

Seems like everyone keeps missing that Static pointed out many pages ago that I'm on console so looking at the release date I won't have the new patch for another couple of days.

As I've already said my views are based off of what I would view as more notable issues already existing in the game, reports here, and my own tracking of various streamers.

So just as much as we can say there are people that think it's busted I'll cite a few people that have a good amount of experience and who are playing the new patch that didn't find the change to be too much.

HeyJensen
Malcom

I've also been tracking a few various youtubers that don't play sorc but do report on the state of the game and generally speaking I find a good amount are saying sorc is of course S tier now but not saying that it's quite busted more so than other things that are already busted and accepted in the game.

I'm not trying to say that there's no issue, just that it's not any bigger of an issue than some existing issues and that even so a good amount of people seem to be tolerating it well in the bigger scheme of things.