In todays article we are going to take a look at how damage shields work in ESO (Elder Scrolls Online). Figuring out what shields can or can’t do and how they work can be tough. ESO doesn’t really explain a lot and therefore the only way to really know how they work is by reading the patch notes, which usually only experienced long term players do.

A long time ago shields worked different than they do today. For example, back in the days attacks that hit shields could not crit, basically shields in ESO were immune to crit damage. Of course this changed alongside a few other things.

If you want to know how shields scale please visit the How do Shields Scale Guide.

How do Shields work in ESO?

Lets take a look at the few important takeaways that shields have.

  • You can critically strike shields
  • Spell and Physical Resistance reduce incoming damage to your shield
  • Poisons and Weapon Enchantments can proc on shields.
  • Bypassing shields with Oblivion damage
  • Shield stacking is possible
  • Shield scaling varies

Critically Strike Shields

You might wonder well why shouldn’t I be able to critically strike enemy shields, isn’t that obvious? Until the Murkmire DLC (2018) you could not critically strike shields in ESO. That gave Sorcerers in PVP a huge advantage because they had one of the biggest shields in ESO. Basically going that far where some builds could spam their shield and enemies could not touch their health at all.

That is why they changed this in the Murkmire DLC so you could actually critically strike shields, which is more fair to the overall balance of the game. For PvE this didn’t matter because monsters never critically stike you.

Spell and Physical Resistance affecting Shields

Until the Murkmire DLC (2018) shields were unaffected by spell and physical resistance. Giving shield users another advantage over enemies that focus on penetration. Basically PVP players took advantage of this, staking big shields with low character resistance. And as long as enemies didn’t get past the shield it didn’t really matter if they were squishy or not.

Now it matters how much resistance you have or how much penetration your enemy has. Because these stats will also affect your shield.

Poisons and Weapon Enchantments

Before the Murkmire DLC (2018) poisons and weapon enchantments could not be activated on enemies with shields. Giving them another advantage over players that don’t focus on shields. This oversight was corrected and now poisons and weapon enchantments can proc on shields too.

Bypassing Shields

There is one way to bypass ESO shields and it is called Oblivion damage. Oblivion damage is a special type of damage that always damages health directly, even if you have a shield active. There are only very little sources of Oblivion damage, for example for PVP important sets would be the Sload’s Semblance set or the Knight Slayer set. Or you could also run an Oblivion weapon enchantment.

In PvE certain boss mechanics do also bypass your shields, this is usually explained in the Dungeon and Trial Guides if an attack ignores shields.

ESO Shield Stacking

In ESO you can actually stack shields. That means a Sorcerer player could stack the class shield Hardened Ward with the light armor skill line shield Dampen Magicka to get an even bigger shield.

Shield Scaling

There is no universal way of how shields scale in ESO. It is best to always read the tooltip of the skill or set. Some skills like Annulment scale off max magicka but are capped at 50% max health, another skill Bone Shield scales only off your max health. The Barrier skill is only scaling off your highest offensive stat (max magicka or max stamina) and for example sets can only be affected by a Champion Point perk called Bastion.

Recommendation: If you want to learn more on how shields scale in ESO please visit the “How do shields scale in ESO Guide“.

You can take a look at a few skills and sets that have a shield, of course these are not all but should give you a good overview:

Most but not all of the information can be found within the Murkmire DLC patch notes. The developers also made a comment in the patch notes about the changes to shields that happened:

“This change makes damage shields function more consistently with the rest of the game’s mechanics. It means that damage shields are more powerful in PvE content since monsters generally don’t reduce armor. Heavy Armor players in particular will receive much more effective damage shields now. This is intended to make damage shields a more potent tools for tanks.

In addition to this change, there are several other damage shield adjustments listed below in the specific abilities section.”

how do damage shields work in ESO

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