Hey Agents,
it's me again with a daily reminder that the shields are still wet paper....
Even with the new protocol / system mod changes and a shield that has 1 Million HP it's simply getting melted by players and NPC's alike.
Shields need to be MUCH tougher than they are now especially considering their absurd cooldown for what they can deliver.
In Heroic content the shield doesn't even last a second under fire from multiple enemies and even in Challenging group play the shield is barely able to sustain vs a single NPC.
My Character is literally tougher than some of the shields are lol.
At 380K armor and 120K Health I have a maximum combined "health" pool of 500K. The Crusader shield has less than 300K hit points and when maxed out is close to 500-550K.
That's barely more than a players health and even those 500K on a player are gone within a couple of seconds....
Right now the shields are pretty much useless in ANY type of PvP outside of some very specialized niche builds and in tougher content they are just a wasted slot.
Either give us the option to reduce the incoming damage to the shield via specialization. (Survivalist would be a good choice here) and increase the base health of the shield by maybe twice the amount or make it a time-based shield ability like in some other RPG's.
I would personally favour the first option but any change would be better than what we have right now.
I guess a 100-200% increase in base shield health would make them somewhat usable in Heroic content and allow for some short-time tanking. In PvP the shields can either have their own modifiers like in Division 1 but I hardly think that change would make it OP there seeing it go from 2 seconds to kill it to 4 seconds by a single person and taking into account, that shields are put away when disrupted... Having in mind the new Exotic Kneepads that were leaked and the new Banshee Pulse that's quite a couple of methods to counter that shield:
Cloaked on the Kneepads
New Exotic Kneepads
EMP Pulse
Banshee Pulse in PvP
Given it's long base cooldown it should be tanky from the beginning and not require tons of electronics spend to make it remotely usable.
TLR
Suggested change:
Shield Base health:
Bulkwark -> 1,5 Million HP
Crusader -> 800K HP
Deflector -> 800K HP
This should make them usable and even allow some other mods than shield health be used. (Looking at you Accuracy and Damage mods!)
Right now they are just WAY too weak and as we have more ways to counter them in PvP as well I don't see a reason to not make them tanky there as well.
(EDIT: I accidently posted this suggestion in the General Discussion Forum first so feel free to check that one out or delete it if it's considered spamming, sorry for the inconvenience.)
Thanks for the reply.Originally Posted by xcel30 Go to original post
I am aware of the ongoing investigation on what to do with skills and I do agree that it might be better to do everything step by step, but in the case of the ballistic shield there is little or no need for a rework of the whole system or skill itself.
It's just a couple of numbers that need to be tweaked as in health values.
Things like Seeker Mine targeting issues, Firefly and Hive usefulness etc. are things that can't be done over night, but small changes like this will have a noticeable impact on balance.
A change to a Ballistic Shield health pool might allow certain other talents and skills to shine as shields would be used more often.
Currently people use the EMP pulse pretty much only to trigger OTR and that's a sad waste of that skill. It could also counter some talents or builds that were totally broken otherwise.
The Bulwark could help keep the Nemesis Snipers in check, Crusaders could semi-counter clutch builds, etc.
I just feel like they need to introduce an ability to tank before they balance any more talents and weapons. The current TTK is too long again so people are already falling back into the habit of chicken dancing.
I am just waiting for a shield buff and a TTK reduction so we have those snappier moments again with the addition of being able to tank when specced for it.