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A Comprehensive Treatise On Wards

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  • Volkan
    Member
     
    August 6, 2013

    No its not mods (im on Xbox) I guess maybe my ward wasn't completely charged I mean I knew they took time to charge but I thought it was already charged as I did it and maybe I was off a couple of seconds

  • Paws
    Member
     
    December 10, 2013

    Alright Vaz, your little seedling planted in the Help Desk has taken root in my mind. See, as a vampire who hasn't fed in weeks, my fire resistance is - 50%. In addition to Alchemy I needed a way of reducing that to a manageable level because I'm toast when fighting hagravens and such.

    I immediately thought of Block and the Elemental Protection perk but I'm starting to wonder if your ward idea actually has better synergy with Vampiric Drain + Blood of the Ancients.

    If it works and I can balance the two, I imagine it to be a thing of beauty. You're a genius Vaz!

  • Mason
    Member
     
    December 11, 2013

    Vaz I've been doing some playing around with wards on a new build I'm slowly working on. Something interesting I've noticed is that wards seem to evolve with your character due to how armor rating works in Skyrim.

    A lesser ward cast by a noob character wearing unsmithed leather armor will absorb less damage than a lesser ward cast by a mid level character wearing glass...

    This is because of the AR curve in this graph. If your character has a fairly good base armor (300) then when you cast your ward you dip into that huge end curve and negate noticeably more damage...same obviously goes for oak ---> ebonyflesh...

    Nice!

  • Vazgen
    Member
     
    December 11, 2013

    Are you sure? They added the same amount of AR for me when I ran the tests. I'll check it out again tomorrow but I'm pretty sure that they add 40,60,80 AR correspondingly. Maybe you use Fortify Restoration potions? I'll test it, you say that the wards add more AR on higher levels?

    Edit: or that the more AR you have when you cast a ward the more it adds to damage reduction percentage due to the curve above?

  • Vazgen
    Member
     
    December 11, 2013

    I tried to make it work once without enchanting and failed. If you can manage VD and ward magicka costs without it you'll be awarded the title of the Honorable Warden of Skyrim!  If not, still cool... 

  • Mason
    Member
     
    December 11, 2013

    No, they don't add more numerical AR...

    They simply work better at blocking physical damage due to temporarily dipping into the end curve shown on the graph above.

    A lesser ward cast when you already have 400 base AR has more damage reduction than a lesser ward cast when you only have 300 base AR.

    Edit: Yes, what you said in your own edit. It's a nice feature because once you have anything over 300AR every bit of extra AR tastes much sweeter...

  • Vazgen
    Member
     
    December 11, 2013

    Ah, I see, so with higher AR they will help more to negate physical damage. Nice!

  • MoLoLu
    Member
     
    December 11, 2013

    In essence, you're saying that temporarily maxing out armor with a ward could be a viable strategy for characters near but not at the armor cap? This sounds very nice indeed.

  • Vazgen
    Member
     
    December 11, 2013

    Edited it in the Ward Facts section 

  • Mason
    Member
     
    December 11, 2013

    It IS very nice indeed!

    Fortify Restoration potions (especially ones of the yellow mountain flower variety) will significantly increase the AR granted by any of the standard wards. You combine that with some modest alteration skills (fleshy spells) and some modest light armor...

    ...maybe a sly lord stone...

    ...you're dipping into end game damage reduction at much earlier levels!

    It's fun....especially because wards are one of the most beautiful spells available in the game!

    (doing some market research here )


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