[Proof] How much a shield absorbs [Screenshot]

[Acyu]

Which is more than an immortal spec warrior can do when launching both of his heavy, long cool down attacks. Ravage, 50 seconds cd, is about 2000 if it hits for all 3 strikes, and crushing blow, 15 second cooldown if you have 5 stacks of armour reduction is about 1200.

 

And yes, it's ONLY 1 tick in the fire, but of course that gives you the ability to sprint through fire and acid, which no one else can do.

 

The problem is not that it's too high. It's that in the time it takes someone to remove it, you've healed all the previous damage you took AND you can cast it again on yourself shortly.

 

Don't even get me started on the fact that you can spec it to blind everyone around you...

 

Uh, it takes more than 1 tick to get through fire, even with sprint. It's just that people JUMP OVER the fire, which makes the shield irrelevant anyway.

 

And don't even get me started on the number of classes capable of "jumping" over huttball hazards.

 

There are dps classes that are dps specced that can take the shield down in 1 GCD, it's not that difficult.

 

Get real.

[Ackmanya]

The shield is a trade off for less offensive power. Their damage is esily healed though and the burst they do manage to squeeze out is middle of the pack at best.

 

And before you start screaming "OMG 1MILLION DAMAGE IN WZ LUL!!!" the vast majority of that is aoe and multi dotting..ie meter padding.

[EternalFinality]

The point is the "just dps it." The point is the lack of sufficient survivability without it. Resolve is so broken right now, and with so many non-"kick" interrupts not on resolve, makes it extremely difficult for a healing sorcerer to survive without shield - even against a single dps - for a reasonable amount of time.

 

And seriously, vanilla priest? That is what you're going to use? And you wonder why vanilla priest was getting owned left and right? LOLROGUE+will of the forsaken.

 

I know exactly why vanilla priest was getting owned. That is however irrelevant. My point is - where is the purge in TOR? There is none.

 

Also, which non-kick interrupts exactly are not affected by resolve? As a Sentinel I can tell you I have exactly one - Force Leap. And it's supposed to interrupt. It also requires you to be more than 10 meters away, unless specced for the short range leap.

[EternalFinality]

The shield is a trade off for less offensive power

 

I laughed.

[Sathid]

The shield is a trade off for less offensive power. Their damage is esily healed though and the burst they do manage to squeeze out is middle of the pack at best.

 

And before you start screaming "OMG 1MILLION DAMAGE IN WZ LUL!!!" the vast majority of that is aoe and multi dotting..ie meter padding.

 

I think Scoundrels should get a 2o second shield like Sorc's,after all we have no utility.

[Acyu]

I know exactly why vanilla priest was getting owned. That is however irrelevant. My point is - where is the purge in TOR? There is none.

 

Also, which non-kick interrupts exactly are not affected by resolve? As a Sentinel I can tell you I have exactly one - Force Leap. And it's supposed to interrupt. It also requires you to be more than 10 meters away, unless specced for the short range leap.

 

Well I keep using marauders, because marauders really are the most annoying class for me to fight against.

 

I'm not exactly sure what the ability is called, but they do have a shortened kick CD (I think 6 seconds), choke (on resolve), that jump thing (which can be talented to be done IN MELEE i believe) and another one of those jump thing that can be done after force stealth.

 

Someone should confirm this.

 

And don't you have force push or something?

 

 

And I also wonder who should get purge?

 

Certainly not warrior classes and not rogue classes?

 

Who had purge/dispel in WoW? Shaman and priests. Give sorcerers dispel? teehee. Who is the shaman equivalent?

Edited February 8, 2012 by Acyu

[CommandoPower]

The test is to test how much the shield absorbs, not whether your attack would pop it.

 

The shield absorbs ~3200 for me, and I believe it absorbs ~3200 no matter who I cast it on.

 

Whether your damage is affected or unaffected by expertise does not change the fact that it absorbs ~3200.

 

The expertise reduction in damage benefits EVERYONE equally, not just sorcerer in shields.

 

If a merc/op healer has 200 HP left and they heal for 3200. If your attack does 3500 normally, but the target has 10% expertise, the attack would only do ~3150, and not kill the healer on the first hit. It's the same thing. It doesn't change how much that healer is healing regardless of how much you're attacking.

 

 

I'm not sure if that is what you're asking...

 

In that case your test is worthless for PVP purposes.

 

If for example your target has 20% mitigation vs the attack via armor and does 5% less damage due to having less expertise that turns that 3,200 hp shield into 4,000 hp shield.

 

Should this be one of the many fights where every person is not focused into the ground OR it's a 1 on 1 then you likely get 2 bubbles. Up to 8,000 at this point. If the Sorc/Sage pre-bubbles before the battle this can end up with 3 bubbles for 12,000 and maximize the chances of being able to put an extra bubble on AFTER the fight has begun. Any and all sorcs of damage interruption/slowing merely assist this.

 

 

Even if you assume that you get 1 bubble in 60% of fights, 2 bubbles in 30% of fights, and 3 bubbles in 10% of fights you've changed the average absorption to 1,920 + 1,920 + 960 = 4,800 base before mitigation. So then added with 25% total mitigation that's an average absorption of 6k a fight for that player.

 

Seeing as your own stats are 20% mitigation, and you have a fair amount of expertise, I don't think that's very far fetched at all. The effect would obviously be greater on a target with more defenses.

 

 

 

 

 

Additionally lets again assume the lowest possible value of 3,200. Not accounting for multiple bubblings OR mitigation. You run into a point with 4 other people. You bubble them all on the way in. Before the fight has even started you have already mitigated up to 12,800 damage. Even if not all of it is used around 10k is pretty likely to be hit. All with minimal impact to your ability to heal/dps.

 

 

 

 

Another point. If your playing team play the bubble has 5-6 second cd. The debuff is 20 seconds from application. This means that you can keep a bubbling rotation on up to 4 people while still having plenty of time for other actions. As long as you've got a memory good enough to play the base levels of simon sez you should be able to avoid the debuff handily. This would allow you to pump out around 8-10k healing consistently (between 4 shields) while using perhaps 25% of your time, leaving you free to heal or DPS the rest of the time. Again this is all without any mitigation being applied which maintains a constant level and spikes with abilities like taunt and defensive cooldowns.

 

 

 

One final advantage I will cover for the moment. Tanks. Lets assume for a moment you actually have a tank and they decide "I guard der healorz!! YAYZ!!" You then have 30% damage reduction to the healer, 3.2k shields on both tank and healer (plus mitigation), defensive cooldowns and positioning tools, guard splitting damage against the person your already doing 30% less to...making it almost as good of a value to attack the tank with their higher mitigation/hp, and a healer. Even if the sorc/sage is not heal spec they can heal well enough for this combo to be extremely strong.

 

Pair a tank with a scoundrel/operative or a commando/bh and I think you will find that when played well a sorc/sage comes out ahead. More utility, dmg PREVENTION, healing, decent to good sustained DPS.

 

 

 

As you can see, shields scale with mitigation, health, teamwork, and battle duration. Becoming more effective as each is added. Straight healing also scales up with most of these, but not as much and is subject to interruption and cannot gain extra "healing" via mitigation.

 

Fact is many sorcs/sages just do not properly utilize their shields because they do not realize how good they are. You'll see them almost always used REACTIVELY instead of PROACTIVELY except in the case of the sorc/sage taking care of themselves perhaps.

[BobaFurz]

I regularly pull in 10+ medals on my Vanguard, whereas 5/8 is normal on the Sorc.

 

Because it is so hard with that class to earn medals, alone from spamming your dart or missile reducing dmg which gives protection points ...ah common there is not much effort to get medals.

 

Medals dont mean much in this game, a sorc/sage get a medal when he just runs through fire and his bubble falls apart, healing him over 2.5k

Edited February 8, 2012 by BobaFurz

[EternalFinality]

Well I keep using marauders, because marauders really are the most annoying class for me to fight against.

 

I'm not exactly sure what the ability is called, but they do have a shortened kick CD (I think 6 seconds), choke (on resolve), that jump thing (which can be talented to be done IN MELEE i believe) and another one of those jump thing that can be done after force stealth.

 

Someone should confirm this.

 

And don't you have force push or something?

 

You don't know much about Sentinels.

 

Force Kick can be talented to 6 seconds. It's normally 8. But that's not a "non kick" interrupt now is it. Talent is deep in the Watchman tree.

 

Choke is 3 sec channeled stun, on resolve. Can be used to interrupt.

 

AOE 6 sec mez (also on resolve) can be used to interrupt also in desperate times.

 

Force Leap interrupts, it's part of the skill. 10m minimum range, can be talented to be used within that 10m too, also deep in the Watchman tree. Can be talented to be a 12 sec cooldown from 15, also deep in the Watchman tree.

 

There is no skill that becomes available from stealth (which is a 4 sec invis by the way).

 

There is another leap (Zealous leap) that can be talented from the Focus tree, but it can ONLY be used inside 10m, and does not interrupt.

 

So you seem to be facing primarily Watchman Sentinels/Annihilation Marauders.

 

Oh, and Guardians/Jugg have Force Push, not Sentinels/Marauders.

Edited February 8, 2012 by EternalFinality

[Acyu]

In that case your test is worthless for PVP purposes.

 

If for example your target has 20% mitigation vs the attack via armor and does 5% less damage due to having less expertise that turns that 3,200 hp shield into 4,000 hp shield.

 

Really? Seriously?

 

No. That's not how it works.

 

The shield is always a 3.2K shield no matter how much you mitigate, and I thought my example plenty demonstrated that.

 

By your logic, a person with 15K HP and 20% mitigation vs. attacker and 5% reduction via expertise has 18750 HP instead of 15K HP.

 

That makes no sense.

 

The shield is at best "additional HP," turning my ~15800 self-buffed HP to ~19000 if I pre-shield. I don't suddenly now have 23.750 HP because of the 25% mitigation.

 

Mitigation and reductions affect EVERYONE, just as expertise buffs all healings including shield.

Edited February 8, 2012 by Acyu

[Trujan]

i find that the sorc bubble just prolonges the inevitable death of that sorc.

Sorcs melt to be honest, they need that bubble, or that double cast bubble to give them a fighting chance, either an extra 3 or 6 seconds for them to get tank backup.

They need the bubble, bubble is fine, and i believe they would be broken without it.

Can anyone here, say that they loose more to a sorc than anyother class?

[justntrue]

I think you counted wrong.

 

If you got hit in PVP, which I'm assuming you did, regardless of whether you USED heals, you will also get out of fight natural regeneration, which, if I'm not mistaken, also counts to healing.

 

The out of combat natural regen is not significant, but, you're probably overestimating by a small amount... maybe 1270ish or so?

 

I'd bet it's a constant value, period. like 2500 seems pretty reasonable.

[BobaFurz]

Well I keep using marauders, because marauders really are the most annoying class for me to fight against.

 

 

What about playing this class a bit, always try the class yourself which is your worst nightmare. So you know how things work.

[EternalFinality]

Who had purge/dispel in WoW? Shaman and priests. Give sorcerers dispel? teehee. Who is the shaman equivalent?

 

Mercs/Commandos are sort of like Elemental Shamans. And they have a healing spec sort of like Paladins.

 

I'll go with Mercs. It would give them something to press other than Tracer Missile.

[Acyu]

What about playing this class a bit, always try the class yourself which is your worst nightmare. So you know how things work.

 

I wish I had the time to roll an alt. But I've spoken to marauders and watched some videos on them. They're just the one class that has the most interrupt abilities and has the ability to "stick on you." All that just translates to a pain for healers, especially since I can't kill him.

 

Operatives I don't really care since knockback in Huttball usually screws them over if they're knocked off the terrain.

[Acyu]

Mercs/Commandos are sort of like Elemental Shamans. And they have a healing spec sort of like Paladins.

 

I'll go with Mercs. It would give them something to press other than Tracer Missile.

 

That would be interesting.

 

I would lol if they give both mercs and sorcs offensive dispels. all the sorcerers would just be purging each other in warzones, making them so much easier to kill for everyone else.

 

also most sorcerers don't even use their now existing purge, which owns madness sorcerers.

[EternalFinality]

I wish I had the time to roll an alt. But I've spoken to marauders and watched some videos on them. They're just the one class that has the most interrupt abilities and has the ability to "stick on you." All that just translates to a pain for healers, especially since I can't kill him.

 

Operatives I don't really care since knockback in Huttball usually screws them over if they're knocked off the terrain.

 

The Sentinels that can stick on you the most are the combat specs ones like me. We get both a 3 sec root on Master Strike and a 3 sec root on Crippling throw. I can stay near Sorcs where a Watchmen spec would get outrun. However, I have less ability to interrupt at close range. Tradeoffs.

[CommandoPower]

Really? Seriously?

 

No. That's not how it works.

 

The shield is always a 3.2K shield no matter how much you mitigate, and I thought my example plenty demonstrated that.

 

By your logic, a person with 15K HP and 20% mitigation vs. attacker and 5% reduction via expertise has 18750 HP instead of 15K HP.

 

That makes no sense.

 

The shield is at best "additional HP," turning my ~15800 self-buffed HP to ~19000 if I pre-shield. I don't suddenly now have 23.750 HP because of the 25% mitigation.

 

Mitigation and reductions affect EVERYONE, just as expertise buffs all healings including shield.

 

If the damage used to remove the shield is mitigated damage it makes quite a big difference actually. Essentially somebodies survivability is their hp + their mitigation = effective hp.

 

Thus a 10,000 hp person with 25% mitigation requires 12,500 damage in reality to kill that person. 12.5k would be their effective HP. If that person only had 10% mitigation their effective hp would be 11,000.

 

 

Thus vs mitigated damage the value of protection a shield provides rises sharply in direct proportion to the mitigation. In simple terms: the more incoming damage is reduced the better shields protect you if they are absorbing mitigated damage.

 

 

The damage mitigation in this game ranges greatly. Passive mitigation of energy and kinetic damage ranges from 10% to easily in excess of 50%. Internal/elementla mitigation ranges from 0% to in excess of 15%. Defensive cooldowns typically add greatly to these for short periods of time.

 

This adds entirely new wrinkles. If mitigation applies it would work very well against a sorceror or marksmenship gunslinger, but poorly against a dirty fighting scoundrel or a pyrotech merc. The difference in kinetic/energy and internal/elemental mitigation.

 

 

Thus something simple as adding 3.2k hp might be like giving one person 3.5k hp and another 5k hp or more depending on the situation :3.

[Treplos]

So how much did that single shield "absorb?"

 

3273

 

This is about one tick of fire, or three tick of acid.

 

Less than one opener from an operative, or approximately a single crit from a tracer missile.

 

 

1) I often hit bubbled sorcs/sages and it requires a full opener rotation to break it (i.e. AB/HS followed by a Shiv) to get like 200-300 damage in. Operatives do not have 100% crit. PS: DPS Sorc also go for "Backlash 2/2", which totally shuts down my burst on them.

 

 

2) The formula for "Static Barrier", according to Torhead comments is:

 

1162 + 327% of Force Healing Bonus before talents. With "Lightning Barrier 2/2", you get +20% on top of that.

 

The question is, how much "bonus healing" do you have?

And how much "bonus healing" would a BM sorc/sage healer have?

 

 

3) Shields are the best form of healing. They raise your effective HP and they are instant (require 1 GCD). Also "Static Barrier" can be used every 20s and you can even pre-cast it (30s duration) to use it again if it pops.

Edited February 8, 2012 by Treplos

[Karbonkopi]

Please, under no circumstances, do not add a purge ability to this game....... The cleanse is fine... half the baddie healers don't even use that now.

 

Sorc Bubble is there for their survivability. Good dps specs, especially pure pvp dps specs can destroy hybrid sorcs, which is wut most of the people are really complaining about. I watched it happen over and over again yesterday in Ilum.

 

I don't see anyone complaining that the sentinel/marauder 99% dmg reduction, or the fact that they get a combat vanish. Not to mention their normal shield(sabre ward/??? sith side) which is 25% melee/50% ranged dmg reduction, rebuke which dmg's people when they are hit....... honestly, all gear being equal..... I much rather fight a hybrid sorc, than either of these with equal gear in 1 vrs 1.

 

the forums are full of, such and such is over powered, well wow did it this way.. nerf this, nerf that.. blah blah blah. Honestly, the operative/smuggler 'nerf/balance' just encouraged more qq'ing in the hopes that more would follow. in my honest opinion, i agreed with the changes, and find that they still have no problem killing after the changes.... but at least now I have time to recover from their knockdown/opener and put up a fight, whereas before, u would be dead before your character even began to regain it's feet.

 

Please bioware, for the love of god, do not give in to the constant qq'ing of the pvp community on the forums in general. Please take this all with a grain of salt, and glean what balance changes need to be made from semi-informative, constructive posts people do make sometimes on these forums. Don't make this game anything like wow. Wow pvp is still broken... and the game is years old. wow pvp is still unbalanced. Honestly Swtor is more balanced in its current state pvp wise, all things being equal including gear, than Wow has EVER been.

 

P.s. - The best suggestion on this forum that I have yet to see a response from is to allow either

a> character copy onto the test server or

b> pre-made un-specialized level 50 characters available for the test server

 

Although, this will Definitely INCREASE the amount of BALANCE QQ'ing found on the forums... which in most cases can almost be completely ignored and is conjecture or opinion; It could have prevented things like wut happened to Ilum on some servers once the patch went live.

 

For the most part, I think Swtor is a great game, moving in the right direction, new to the hateful mmo community and has quite a bit to learn about how little of the player base is actually on the forums posting these 'unbalanced this or that posts'. Wow made the mistake in putting far too much focus on what the forum player base thought of the 'current' balance of the game, and as a result has pretty much been unbalanced in pvp one way or another since the beginning. To this very day, PVP in Wow is definitely Not Balanced.

 

Anyway, take the Qq'ing with a grain of salt... buff my Vanguard pls, and Keep rolling out the content, patches, updates, and fixes. Thanks.

[Vales]

seriously if bubble is as bad as sorcs/sages all make it out to be can we just remove it from the game then?

 

So what do we get as def CD as compensation? Because so far it is our only real def CD otherwise we have just some utility and CC.

As others have pointed out the shield does not gain anything from resistances etc. meaning you pound on that 3000-3500 HP like the sage/sorc is naked.

 

Tell me how difficult is it to deal 3k damage to a naked target?

 

Please bioware, for the love of god, do not give in to the constant qq'ing of the pvp community on the forums in general.

 

Quoted for emphasis. Most players here are bad at PvP and I include myself in that category but unlike other bads I know I have to improve first and foremost.

 

Whining on forums is just cheap and incredibly bad behaviour. Most people who'd do an MMO here would fail so miserably with their "balance" it would be funny to see them trying in vain to bring their "glorious" balance into frution.

 

I think Scoundrels should get a 2o second shield like Sorc's,after all we have no utility.

 

Since they have no Stealth and no instant Invis and AoE 20% damage reduction CD, right?

Edited February 8, 2012 by Vales

[Luciferhawke]

It obviously isnt the same for everyone on how they experience the bubble.

 

On my 39 sage, my bubble is burst so quickly it isnt even funny. Level 23 Op hit me so hard it burst my bubble and did 2700 damage before he even finished the combo. Yea I know, that kind of damage isnt normal except from very few people (he kept targeting me and doing it all game). I cant imagine how bad it would be without it.

 

If i get hit with a slow, then i see the AoE target of a tracer missile, i instantly try to run, even when i'm out of the "red" area, my bubble is burst and i take 2 hits before i even clear the blast zone.

 

When i switch to my assassin,scoundrel or commando, i hate the bubbles

[Vales]

So....dps through it. Yeah. Real great counter there. How exactly do you kick a shield cast by the way?

 

 

 

In Vanilla WoW, Priests had exactly one escape move - fear. If you countered the fear, they had nothing.

 

Sorcs have much more than one escape move.

 

1.) Vanilla is such a stupid term for the classic WoW I do not understand why people use it. What comes next. choclate and walnuts?

 

2.) Classic PvP balance was ****. And with **** I mean some classes didn't even have properly funciton base class skills like druids shapeshifting.

The servers were flooded with terribad rogues who thought that CD rushing single targets in a 1v1 situation was the epitome of skill and then whining they are useless for the next odd 5 minutes until Prep was there again.

 

So please do not mention Classic WoW for anything which involves PvP balance. It was non existant in that time. In fact the first half year or so there was only two kinds of PvP: city raids which crashed servers and TM/SS bashing which was a low level zone and rove those players who started later out of the zone. It was unplayble for any non 60.

[Luciferhawke]

mmmm Chocolate and Walnut

[Venilator]

I swear Tor got infected by the loner pug players who wish to nerf any class that is capable of throwing a heal.

 

 

OMG SHIELD IS SO BROKEN BECAUSE IT KEEPS ME FROM KILLING SOMEONE!!!1

 

 

Pug more.... Sorry you can't get into 4 man premades where you have healers healing your worthless characters..