Does Siege Shield even work?

Veinblood1965 · September 9

I tried using this many times for days at a time and hardly any reduction in damage was noticed near rams or keeps etc. I noticed hardly anyone uses it at all. Is it that worthless? Not working correctly? It should at least cut damage received by half since that is what the tool tip states.

Bammlschwamml · September 9

"Create a protective sphere over your location that reduces damage taken from siege weapons by 50% for you and nearby allies."

As far as i know nothing has changed and it still works as intended. Against siege weapons (oil, cold fire...), not against player skills, npcs etc.

Plenty of groups are using it. But sometimes you can't see siege shields from other players. Especially when there is a lot going on. Sometimes there are more than 3 siege shields on the ram, and the grouplead keeps asking for siege shields, because they can't see them. Maybe that's why you feel like nobody else uses it.

The damage reduction only works while you are inside of the shield. When you run out of the shield while you have oils burning on your char, you should notice a huge difference.

Veinblood1965 · September 10

Bammlschwamml wrote: »

"Create a protective sphere over your location that reduces damage taken from siege weapons by 50% for you and nearby allies."

As far as i know nothing has changed and it still works as intended. Against siege weapons (oil, cold fire...), not against player skills, npcs etc.

Plenty of groups are using it. But sometimes you can't see siege shields from other players. Especially when there is a lot going on. Sometimes there are more than 3 siege shields on the ram, and the grouplead keeps asking for siege shields, because they can't see them. Maybe that's why you feel like nobody else uses it.

The damage reduction only works while you are inside of the shield. When you run out of the shield while you have oils burning on your char, you should notice a huge difference.

Thank you. That's kind of the reason for the post though. Here is what I noticed. When playing my healer I slotted Siege Shield for a few days and used it all the time when oils or siege weapons where on us. I can see my shield however I seemed to take just as much damage as normal from oils etc. I mean we basically would have to pull back rather than die near a ram when oils were falling.

You'd think with 50 percent reduction in damage it would be rather noticeable. I'm wondering if it only counters ONE of the enemies oil damage at a time and when there are multiple people dropping oils the extra enemies oils are at 100% or something?

Is anyone else using them that notices a decrease in damage received? Is there a way to test this?

edward_frigidhands · September 10

It works. However siege damage is really high and siege shield alone is not enough. Other defensive effects, mitigation boosts and active healing is needed to survive an onslaught of oils and coldfire siege damage. Meatbag catapults however need to be destroyed immediately.

Bammlschwamml · September 10

Oils deal a lot of damage. Even when you are standing in a siege shield. As far as i know you can't avoid the first tick. So if you get hit by coordinated siege at the same time (almost noone coordinates siege anymore), you should probably move out before it hits you and kills you instantly. This can be tricky because oil is hard to see and sometimes it's completely invisible. The sound can be delayed, so it can't be trusted either. And sometimes it's so laggy that the timing is completely broken and you get all the ticks at the same time etc. You can't dodge roll the damage, you can't block the damage and you take extra flame damage when you are a vampire.

Unless your group is very tanky and has strong heals, i wouldn't recommend standing on a spot with more than one or two oils on it. Purge helps a lot and makes it possible to survive a lot more siege. If you are careful and don't blow everyone up with plaguebreak

Since plaguebreak got nerfed (20 second cooldown) it's not so bad anymore, but you still have to be very careful.

Some people say 1 siege shield only protects 6 players, but I don't know if this is true. You don't need more than 6 players on a ram (or flag) anyway. It can't go faster than with 6 players standing on it. Every extra player steals heals and makes it easier for enemy bombers. If there are already 6 players on a ram, i try to support them from a little further away, or use ballistas.

Siege shields next to each other are better than stacking them on one spot. If an enemy puts up a negate on your ram, your people will have somewhere to go and are still protected. Sometimes people will try to flee the hot zone with oils and plaguebreak on them, and will run towards a group of allies (in hope to get some heals and synergies). Because they moved out of the siege shield, they take full damage, sometimes die instantly and blow up everyone around them. So siege shields a little outside of the most action can be very helpful too.

If you want to be sure about how much damage you take, or if something has changed, you could always test it with some friends/guildmates on an empty and unlocked campaign. Just be careful that nobody reports you for ap boosting, some people report before they know what's going on

YandereGirlfriend · September 15

It often feels like Siege Shield doesn't do anything - which, I think, is simply a testament to how busted siege damage is at the moment.

Nothing in the game has remotely comparable DPS to that of a single oil.

mook-eb16_ESO · September 15

3X SHIELDS AND YOU WILL NOTICE

ForumSavant · September 16

Siege shield is very strong, the problem is siege itself is too strong. Siege applies unique debuffs that are much stronger than anything you can find in the game, and even with siege shield a ram can get melted within 10 seconds from full HP.

YandereGirlfriend · September 17

ForumSavant wrote: »

Siege shield is very strong, the problem is siege itself is too strong. Siege applies unique debuffs that are much stronger than anything you can find in the game, and even with siege shield a ram can get melted within 10 seconds from full HP.

Indeed, like those values are all tuned for back when Major Defile and Major Vulnerability were both like 30%.

So like a Scattershot applying a unique 20% damage taken made more sense. Nowadays, that same 20% is literally DOUBLE Major Vulnerability.

Like, WHAT?!

Necrotech_Master · September 17

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

Bammlschwamml wrote: »

"Create a protective sphere over your location that reduces damage taken from siege weapons by 50% for you and nearby allies."

As far as i know nothing has changed and it still works as intended. Against siege weapons (oil, cold fire...), not against player skills, npcs etc.

Plenty of groups are using it. But sometimes you can't see siege shields from other players. Especially when there is a lot going on. Sometimes there are more than 3 siege shields on the ram, and the grouplead keeps asking for siege shields, because they can't see them. Maybe that's why you feel like nobody else uses it.

The damage reduction only works while you are inside of the shield. When you run out of the shield while you have oils burning on your char, you should notice a huge difference.

Thank you. That's kind of the reason for the post though. Here is what I noticed. When playing my healer I slotted Siege Shield for a few days and used it all the time when oils or siege weapons where on us. I can see my shield however I seemed to take just as much damage as normal from oils etc. I mean we basically would have to pull back rather than die near a ram when oils were falling.

You'd think with 50 percent reduction in damage it would be rather noticeable. I'm wondering if it only counters ONE of the enemies oil damage at a time and when there are multiple people dropping oils the extra enemies oils are at 100% or something?

Is anyone else using them that notices a decrease in damage received? Is there a way to test this?

the dots from oils stack, if your in a typical ram on front door setup, you could still have as many as 4 oils hitting you at once

an oil, without siege shield, is ~10k tics

with siege shield its ~5k ticks

but if your hit with 4 oils, thats still ~20k dot dmg unless you purge the oil

with 50% reduction even getting hit with 2 oils is still doing the same dmg as 1 oil without the siege shield, which is a pretty typical occurrence at a ram on FD

the dmg reduction is noticeable on my NB with low self healing, the difference of taking 10k per tick and 5k per tick is pretty huge

but if you start adding additional siege to the 1 oil, then you need additional healing to continue to keep up with it, 50% reduction is huge, but if they set up twice as much siege its basically countering the siege shield by overwhelming it lol

ForumSavant · September 17

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

ForumSavant wrote: »

Siege shield is very strong, the problem is siege itself is too strong. Siege applies unique debuffs that are much stronger than anything you can find in the game, and even with siege shield a ram can get melted within 10 seconds from full HP.

Indeed, like those values are all tuned for back when Major Defile and Major Vulnerability were both like 30%.

So like a Scattershot applying a unique 20% damage taken made more sense. Nowadays, that same 20% is literally DOUBLE Major Vulnerability.

Like, WHAT?!

Oil applying a 50% heal debuff with a massive DoT . Not to mention the new siege set that came out to make siegers who don't have to spec into damage at all even more invulnerable.

Huge plays zenimax!