Are shield abilities balanced around the fact they can increase the EHP of characters in combat?

Avran_Sylt · December 2024

I mention this given it seems that a lot of shield abilities seem to operate under the assumption that they are used in an immediate sense, like heal, rather than proactively. Given their shielding output.

(Comparison being I have an undergeared Sorc that can have a shield for 20K shield + 5K hP that both heals and increases effective HP through overshield versus a nightlbade that has a 13K hp single-target heal)

Taril · December 2024

For the most part, it seems that way.

Most shield abilites are high value and low duration (Usually 4-6 seconds) and cannot be stacked.

This is more indicative of a design where they're about providing burst health rather than being kept active for longer periods of time to function like EHP increases.

That said, the dual resources (Combined with hybridization update) does mean that it's more feasible for someone to maintain shields nigh constantly due to being able to fully utilize both resources, bypassing damage shields low duration/high cost by simply having a secondary resource to use on them.

MincMincMinc · January 3

Yes shield is basically considered the same as a burst heal. With the benefit of acting as over maxhp, with the negative of not being persistent or getting you out of execute range.

In the days of old, sorc also was designed to have a deficit sustain model. However over the years zos slowly made all of the classes the same in order to function in all pve content. >> Around the Vvardenfel era.

Some of sorc's passives still show this system. When you used to run a deficit build you want low ability costs and large pools to draw from. This way you slowly burn out of resources, and then come up for air by dark dealing. This is why darkdeal used to give all flat resources and not a resource over time. The whole idea was to not allow sorc to have constant resources so they had to manage their pools.

As you can imagine this doesn't work in the current late game pve model which is just 10 mins of parsing bosses.

It just pains me to listen to people complain about sorcs spamming streak or wards when it used to be so easy to gas out a bad sorcs.

Avran_Sylt · January 5

Taril wrote: »

For the most part, it seems that way.

Most shield abilites are high value and low duration (Usually 4-6 seconds) and cannot be stacked.

This is more indicative of a design where they're about providing burst health rather than being kept active for longer periods of time to function like EHP increases.

That said, the dual resources (Combined with hybridization update) does mean that it's more feasible for someone to maintain shields nigh constantly due to being able to fully utilize both resources, bypassing damage shields low duration/high cost by simply having a secondary resource to use on them.

Hmm. Intersting.

And thus, the more your shield gets damaged during its duration, the more efficient the cast was, so having massive defensive stats isn't always the best method, meaning shields could favor softer targets (defensive stat wise), the same kind of builds who would benefit even more from the added EHP.

Man, the Sorcs hardened ward is vastly overtuned now that I think about it. Strong health scaling (72%), and without pets you get HP healing to recoup from execute range/heal, as well as EHP from the shield overcap, in addition to the bonus offensive stats from being petless that help scale the heal/shield more. All in one spell-slot.

Stx · January 9

Keep in mind that shields can’t benefit from crit or crit healing like a direct heal can. But yeah shield abilities are great and very reliable forms of defense.

Avran_Sylt · January 9

Stx wrote: »

Keep in mind that shields can’t benefit from crit or crit healing like a direct heal can. But yeah shield abilities are great and very reliable forms of defense.

Oh, right.

Wonder if the heal for Hardened Ward can crit.

Necrotech_Master · January 9

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Stx wrote: »

Keep in mind that shields can’t benefit from crit or crit healing like a direct heal can. But yeah shield abilities are great and very reliable forms of defense.

Oh, right.

Wonder if the heal for Hardened Ward can crit.

im sure it can because the heal and shield are 2 separate actions