Bane Shield (less-so Discordant Fluctuation)

[TsuSurf]

No I’m gonna leave my comments and stuff if a moderator wants to take them down they can do so themselves. I’m entitled to defend my characters rights to a proper gameplaying experience

[CeeJay89]

Yeah, so how about you go and combine them into one post and delete the rest.

[Detangler]

One chosen reflecting back what 600 damage? Thats not overperforming. You got hit with multiple chosens popping off bane shield.

Id be glad if knights got a similar ability. Anything to push back against the insane aoe damage that ranged dps are accustomed to sitting safely out of harms way in keep funnel situations.

Sorry you took some damage. Maybe be friends with a tank guard or healer. Or maybe don't spam aoe endlessly in a keep situation without paying attention.

[jonnytovey]

Oh no, now we dont get to fire and forget our AOE!

[CeeJay89]

One chosen reflecting back what 600 damage? Thats not overperforming. You got hit with multiple chosens popping off bane shield.

Id be glad if knights got a similar ability. Anything to push back against the insane aoe damage that ranged dps are accustomed to sitting safely out of harms way in keep funnel situations.

Sorry you took some damage. Maybe be friends with a tank guard or healer. Or maybe don't spam aoe endlessly in a keep situation without paying attention.

Second screenshot. One Chosen. 3 seconds. 4k damage. Please pay attention. This isn't a DPS AoEing and popping off their strongest abilities and dropping a group. It's a Chosen pressing one button.

As for "firing and forgetting", there's nothing else to do with ranged AoE? What exactly is your one button, 17s anti AoE buff? Oh yeah, fire and forget. Smooth analysis.

Anyways, I didn't expect anything reasonable out of this. I'm content making people aware of an overperforming ability. If the devs want to keep it that way, cool. Otherwise, enjoy it while it lasts.

[wargrimnir]

This will be fixed. Sorry for the loss to any Chosen out there, but that many ticks per second brings up all sorts of issues long past. You'll still have a functional skill, just not that functional.

I'm actually going to leave this unlocked. It appears to be working as designed, although results like that might not be desirable.

Other backlash type effects are implemented with a damage type in mind, strength, ballistic, or intelligence. Bane Shield is built using all three. It also has a 1s ICD already built into the skill, so the most you should see from Chosen is 6 ticks per second that you're dealing direct damage to them.

For a BW, this is most likely coming from Fireball Barrage or Rain of Fire, as each tick of the channel counts as direct damage, which is why you get all your procs from it. The chance that you're hitting the Chosen+5 group members should be relatively low the vast majority of the time, so it appears they're intentionally stacking on a Chosen to maximize this effect or you're just really unlucky.

For an Engi, it gets a little worse. Napalm Grenade counts as direct damage as well, but it's not a channel, just a puddle on the floor that a Chosen and his entire group with Bane Shield could stand in and burn down the Engi from any distance. That should probably count as dot damage, which requires a code change to do so, and carries other potential issues. Phos Rounds is another AOE channel that would still proc the ticks of Bane Shield across all of his allies.

So if Bane Shield needs to be changed, how would you even go about it? The only thing that would make sense to me is to change the radius of effect of the backlash effect on Bane Shield to be limited to 60' (the implication being that spiritual energy needs to lash out, doesn't mean infinite range), but I'm not sure if the radius setting works like that. That would allow ranged classes to at least have some measure of safety at range, kind of a standard requirement for any ranged class.

[jtj5002]

I got the perfect solution for you. Change AOE cap back to 9 targets.

[Detangler]

This will be fixed. Sorry for the loss to any Chosen out there, but that many ticks per second brings up all sorts of issues long past. You'll still have a functional skill, just not that functional.

I'm actually going to leave this unlocked. It appears to be working as designed, although results like that might not be desirable.

Other backlash type effects are implemented with a damage type in mind, strength, ballistic, or intelligence. Bane Shield is built using all three. It also has a 1s ICD already built into the skill, so the most you should see from Chosen is 6 ticks per second that you're dealing direct damage to them.

For a BW, this is most likely coming from Fireball Barrage or Rain of Fire, as each tick of the channel counts as direct damage, which is why you get all your procs from it. The chance that you're hitting the Chosen+5 group members should be relatively low the vast majority of the time, so it appears they're intentionally stacking on a Chosen to maximize this effect or you're just really unlucky.

For an Engi, it gets a little worse. Napalm Grenade counts as direct damage as well, but it's not a channel, just a puddle on the floor that a Chosen and his entire group with Bane Shield could stand in and burn down the Engi from any distance. That should probably count as dot damage, which requires a code change to do so, and carries other potential issues. Phos Rounds is another AOE channel that would still proc the ticks of Bane Shield across all of his allies.

So if Bane Shield needs to be changed, how would you even go about it? The only thing that would make sense to me is to change the radius of effect of the backlash effect on Bane Shield to be limited to 60' (the implication being that spiritual energy needs to lash out, doesn't mean infinite range), but I'm not sure if the radius setting works like that. That would allow ranged classes to at least have some measure of safety at range, kind of a standard requirement for any ranged class.

spells that act as ground targeted pulsing damage areas shouldn't proc bane shield on each tick. If it can't be programmed to only do the one initial application bane shield tick, then make those abilities somehow be immune to bane shield (I have no idea what your possibilities are for programming, I'm just spitballing).

Also you keep stating the 6 group members, when Bane Shield for sure right now works for people outside your 6 man group. That fix/change alone will lessen the chances you see 6 bane shield procs. Healers won't be standing in the funnel with the tanks.

[Nefarian78]

What debuffs did you have on you? What are your resistances? What is your toughness? Posting a screenshot with random numbers while clearly unguarded and 0 context isn't proof enough that something is overperforming. I could do the same and post a random screenshot with me getting hit for 2400 by Shattering Blow and omitting the fact that it happened on my meme shaman wearing Dominator gear while armor debuffed by a WL wearing Sov

The skills gets troublesome only when playing in Fortresses while in a pug warband with no guard and competent healers. Considering the current state of Fortresses, i don't think anything should be balanced around those absolute masterpieces of content.

To put things in perspective a little, a an average geared Runepriest Rune of Adamant is now critting for over 1250 every 3s with their own Healbuff up (Which is procced by the spell itself). Add Focused Mending to the mix (which Destro has no way of countering) and that is another 15% increased healing. A fully geared Runepriest is easily going to crit in the range of 1500 to 1600 with their Rune and have a non-crit tic in the range of 900 to 1k. [Edit: Apparently, this was the result of a bug in pve and not the skill's real healing after doing some tests on both RP and Zealot. Apologies for jebaiting]

In a 24v24 there's going to be 4 Chosens at most and Bane Shields are usually called out like challenges (if at all), not used all at once like a morale bomb as the damage is volatile and not controlled by the one using the spell. Additionally, (assuming you're not being a puglord and soloqing) you're going to have Kotbs aura increasing your resistance by 320+, a Guard and all the rest that comes when playing in a half decent warband. Guard and Gather Your Resolve alone will more than halve the damage

I'm fairly certain your healers and the tank guarding you can easily deal with damage tics in the 15-35s range. Even if there's 4 bane shields at the same time and you're spamming RoF in the middle of the warband, that Rune of Adamant alone is more than enough to completely outheal the damage you get.

To top it all off, it's an Enchantment which means it can be Shattered. Just like Rampage!

Edit: This part got cut off cuz reasons.

Only reasonable change i can see happening is making Bane Shield a pulsing aura so that once shattered on the Chosen it's gone and that was that.

[satanlol]

The problem with Dire Shield is that it buffs the closest 24 players at the moment. (Also out of warband/party)
The tooltip clearly says “will now also protect any of your allies within 30 feet.”

This means that if the Bright Wizard hits 24 players with his AoE he will get Bane Shield x24 + any Discordant Fluctuation procs back.

It did not work like this on live, Dire Shield was party wide only. But since the fix here Dire Shield has been applied to the closest 24 players within 30 ft.