Shield of Order vs Shield of Destiny Buff?

As a caster (necro), I have noted many people say if you raid then use Shield of Destiny buff, if you group then stick to Shield of Order even at 115. Looking at the description of the two spells, clearly Shield of Destiny is the better buff, just by stats alone in the sense that Shield of Destiny will absorb more TOTAL damage before fading:
1: Absorb Spell Damage: 60% over 30000, Total: 251393
VS shield of Order:
1: Absorb Spell Damage: 60% over 15000, Total: 222459

I am not considering melee damage for now just the spell damage.

I am currently spending my time in ToV... in the Tower of Frozen Shadow trying to get my bloody 5th floor key so I can complete my stupid merc missions so I can bloody move on to the next tier on my Rallos Zek earring.

I am often hit with two DoTs from mobs, Touch of Goop or Restless Ice. Both of these are MASSIVE. It takes my Merc... and that is if she feels like it, for ever to cure it and or keep me alive. Generally I have those DoTs on me as I pull or break a camp and then the merc is more concerned on healing my pet at that point as it is tanking.

Can anyone explain exactly why in the group game we should use the earlier buff rather than the new one (at 115 of course). Just from the description, I would surmise that it's the threshold of those buffs only kicking in AFTER 30K of spell damage for Destiny and 15K for Order. I can see this possibly for melee hits but for spell damage, and by spell damage I mean these massive Dot's that do WELL over the thresholds for each round right from the get go, that it would still be better to use Destiny for its overall total. Unless I am completely off and those buffs do NOTHING against those Dots? Thanks!

On raids I use shield of destiny because of AEs. In groups I use shield of order, to survive a loose add for more than one round of melee damage.
I always thought those spells only affected direct damage, and not dots.
For dots, I gamble on fast cures from my healer.

Oh man if those do NOT work off DoTs then I am just wasting my time worrying about it.

Well, on raids I seem to get dots that hurts for 200k+/tick no matter what buff I have, so I figured they didn't work there.
Boosting heroics to gain dot-shielding does seem to have a small effect.

If shield of order/destiny did work on dots, they wouldn't last more than a few ticks anyway.

Well said about the duration -- that is a simple explanation that makes sense. It would fade in no time.

I might have been looking at this in a rather simple way. Unless the actual buff says something specific to DoTs like the 2 or 3 chanter buffs (which I beg from from a friend every time I start my few hours in TOFS, I guess others simply do NOT affect DoT damage.
I usually do not have enough time to try and cure myself with whatever I have before I have to FD and fade, while the DoT eats away at me, relying on my lovely merc to HEAL and cure.
Thank you Jumbur.

Yeah. Deviser's auspice and Legion of cekenar, specifically mention dot absorption.

You might want to read this older thread: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...fate-not-working-or-i-dont-understand.205737/

Granted it speaks about the older self-shield spell since it's from several years ago but the same principle applies. Beimeith explains it well.

So if you're in an exp group and you are only getting hit with an AE DD or a melee strike that is up to 30K damage, Shield of Destiny won't do anything for you. Hence, why the lower level one works better in those scenarios.

I dont think anything less than 30k is really concerning. My weak wizard alt has over 300k.

Well looks like I should have done more searching. Rexa thank you for that. I missed it as it was dealing with an even older version of the buff. Anyhow I read the part from Beimeith and sure enough he/she states:
It works -great- for helping to mitigate damage AEs, (but not DoTs!), Well that is all I needed to read for my issues. However, the rest still applies for DD and melee damage and I get the differences now.
Cheers everyone and sorry to have bugged.

Nothing to be sorry about. A lot of spell descriptions have become (or have been left) ambiguous on certain spells. I mean "spell damage" can certainly be interpreted by many people as either direct damage or damage over time. It's confusing

At the time the spell line was introduced, there was not yet an SPA that let it work on DoTs. That was added a few years later, but the powers that be for whatever reason decided it should be an Enchanter only thing.

Meanwhile, basically every raid has 200k+ tick DoTs now...

I just don't get their thinking with this spell line. You are level 110, for instance, and you use Shield of Order when fighting mobs in RoS group content that hit for a max of 30k or less. Then you get to 112 and get an upgrade to the spell (Shield of Destiny), but you are still finishing up RoS progression, so using your new, higher level spell actually becomes pointless. That just makes no sense to me as a matter of game design. Why don't these spells get unambiguously better with increased level like just about everything else in the game?

A shield with a too low treshold for the content is also pointless. You want it to minimize the spikes nothing more, but if the shield absorbs too much, then it fades way too quickly.

I actually choose the shield depending on the content im doing, if I want to molo in CotF or earlier then I choose the shield from that expansion(shield of fate), because that is the expansion it was tuned for.
Or you can choose the version where the merc-healer can keep up with the damage, if you want to tank stuff.

It is one of the few spells we have, where the newest version is not always the best suited one.
That doesn't mean the newest one isn't really good. It has saved my life on raids more times than I can count.

Because raid content hits a lot harder than group content.

Destiny ignores 30k. Order ignores 15k.

If you are hit for 100k...

Destiny absorbs 70k, or 70% of the total damage.
Order absorbs 85k, or 85% of the total damage.

After 4 DDs, that looks like...

With destiny you get hit for... 30k, 30k, 30k, 41k (absorbs 70k->70k->70k->59k)
Order you get hit for... 15k, 15k, 52k, 100k (absorbs 85k->85k->48k->0k)

In raid content you are more likely to get for 200-300k so the above is more compressed.

So the issue is that in some content you want a lower threshold to eat short term spikes or smaller DDs and in other content you want a higher threshold that will spread the average spell damage over several spells rather than absorbing most of it up front and then getting obliterated when it fades.

The melee component is also worth considering when going back to older content. Older content the mobs don't hit as hard so the threshold means you actually take more damage with the newer version of the spell.

Again though the decision between the two spells is if you want short term higher absorption (order) or a larger total average absorption (destiny).

One might suggest that the natural implication of it fading too quickly means that the overall total absorption should be increased. (Or that the content is tuned way too high to begin with).

Look at the thread. I mention raid mobs quadding for 40k @ that level, (160k per round) while caster HP levels were ~100k, so easily able to be 1-shotted if you pulled aggro.


Shield of Fate absorbed 105k total, with 75% over 10k.

So, with a quad of 40k, it would absorb 40k-10k * .75 = 22.5k * 4 = 90k. So a caster would still take 70k of the damage, about 70% of their life, and SoF would be mostly (but not totally) exhausted, but at least you could take a single round of combat without being instagibbed.



Compare that to now:

Zlandicar can hit for 178k, (not sure if absolute max hit or not) so a quad of ~712k.

Caster HP varies a bit more depending on augs, but ranges between 450-500k if maxed, maybe slightly more in extreme cases. Let's assume the high end and say 500k.

Shield of Destiny absorbs 75% over 30k with a total of 198k.

You can already see by eyeballing the numbers without the math that SoD can't even protect you from TWO hits before fading, much less 4. Let's do the math anyway:

With a quad of 178k, it would absorb 178-30 * .75 = 111 * 4 = 444k. Ah, but wait, it only absorbs 198k, so it gets entirely used up before half the round is over.

So the hit you actually would take is 712-198 = 514k. Enough to round virtually all casters and thus absolutely NOT doing the job it was created for.


Just for funsies, if you want to know what the total absorption Destiny would need to be to protect you at the same level Shield of Fate did (i.e. have ~30% of your life remaining):

Total absorb value of ~375k. Note that this is again assuming a player HP value of 500k.


If you assume a player HP value of 450k (more likely to be true for the majority) Destiny would need a total value of 400k.



TL;DR

Shield of Destiny needs it's total absorption value doubled because raid NPC hits have quadrupled in damage while the Shield lines absorption value has only doubled.

I agree, I have to recast it A LOT on some raids.