This thread is for brainstorming how to improve Sword and Board characters by making their shields more awesome, instead of nerfing dual wielding. Of course, one of my suggestions in that thread seems to be picking up a little steam, and if Gaslamp wants to implement it I certainly won't protest. But it still seems to me that shields need some help. So how could we accomplish this? Here's my thoughts: 1) Make Shield Master require a shield Because that makes carrying a shield that much better. 2) Make Shield Master give exotic damage resistances and magic resistance Here's the way I see it. Shield are more about blocking stuff than about negating damage entirely. I would rework both Master of Arms and Shield Master to reflect this fact. Make Master of Arms focus more on , and while Shield Master gives and, at high levels, . The Duck and Cover ability just seems to be screaming for some to me. You know, kind of like a survive-the-nuke-by-hiding-in-a-fridge kind of thing. (To be fair, Walk It Off seems to beg for a point or two of as well.) Tortoise Maneuver seems like it should cause some existential questions, eventually granting . Maybe there could even be some in there somewhere. 3) Make Shields that give more than just armor If I want armor, I'll wear armor. Shield should be a little more proactive. We have the Wreath of Iron Thorns but no Spike Shield? Seriously, think about adding some cooler shields. Like these: Shield of Nom This is a shield with teeth. It has a chance of an trigger on hit proc that gives victims the Eating Your Face DoT. What does this DoT do? Eats your face, I'd guess... Fire Shield/Ice Shield This is basically like the d20 spells of the same name. Its a shield of fire that protects you from cold damage and lights people hitting you on fire (or a shield of ice that protects you from fire damage and gives people that hit you blue balls, especially thrusties.) What do you mean a fire shield protects you from fire damage? That's just silly. Shield of Windows A shield made of four colorful squares, with a chance to teleport enemies who hit you, as if they had Love Will Teleport Us Apart cast on them. 4) Whatever you guys think of....
How about adding a new capstone to make shields worth using. I can make it really, really simple. After a failed block and all the rolling is done, if you have the capstone of Shield Mastery, you get another chance. Just like that. No special magic or nonsense. Just another chance after you failed to block the first normal time. That alone would make it worth taking over Dual Wield for half the builds I do. All my mages would be shield users then, and would replace Dual Wield with Shield Mastery for that simple change. Half of my warriors would also be defensive warriors, where it would be hard to decide which is better. And that says balanced to me.
I would absolutely love an ability that gives 100, some and for a few turns. It's really awesome as an ability, it allows you to approach dangerous casters and the casters from a zoo, which is important as a warrior. I know I've died from trying to reach the back of the zoo (on a warrior character with an astounding lack of mobility), and something like this could be incredibly useful.
Shields in 'real life' are far more than just walls to hide behind. Shields were (and still are in many places) used to block and absorb damage, yes, but they're also used to strike at opponent's weapons in mid-swing in order to unbalance them, to strike at opponent's legs to immobilize them, to strike at opponent's bodies to injure them, and to advance quickly up close to an opponent's body in order to pin their defenses into place while you take a cheap shot over or around your shield. That said, those techniques take serious training, and most people with shields just stand behind them. So I think Shield Bearer should provide minor stat bonuses, but a host of cool maneuvers that can only be used with shields in hand. Shields themselves, particularly the 7-15 star ones, need to be more interesting and provide a wider variety of defenses. I'd give a lot of specific suggestions, but at the moment I don't have time. Moar later if I find said time.
The base items themselves need some serious revampment. Low level shields are not much better than having an empty hand, and high level shields are outpaced by some low-level heavy armor.
The problem with shields isn't just the shields, it's that you get the benefit of shields (block) from everything else easily. Perhaps a more drastic change would be to halve your block chance when you do not have a shield equipped. Block is the best of the three melee defense stats (block/dodge/counter) imo. I'd rather take 25%-50% damage a hit than dodge 75%-50% of the hits.
Personally I find not getting hit more useful on later levels. (Meaning Dodge.) But early on Block is much more potent since the damage done can be almost negated by blocking. I think nerfing any stat is a bad option. Balance is entirely thrown out when a knee-jerk reaction of a nerf is the option chosen. We can and should do better than a nerf. If too many items give an unreasonable block chance, why do they? Answer that before suggesting a nerf. You will usually talk yourself out of the nerf by answering that. I think this thread is not about changing entire combat mechanics, and more about making the Shield Mastery skill more useful. That is the reason for my suggestion above. I think that is a fair capstone to make it worth picking the skill without making it degreelessness.
I wouldn't say this thread is just about the shield mastery skill. Shield is general just suck. They don't give a lot of AA or block, but even if they did I still wouldn't use them. In every build I would rather use an orb, tome, or dual wield. Universal Principles is the the best "shield" in the game, great exotic resist and you paralyze your opponent 50% of the time on melee.
The problem with Sword & Board is that it's stuck in the rut between Dual Wielding (offense) and Unarmed (defense). The 'balanced' option is almost always sub-optimal (see also: Mario Kart and a lot of fighting games). Buffing shields will shift the balance towards Unarmed, but it's not fixing the root problem.
Some really good suggestions made thus far: 1 - Make the bonuses & abilities from Shield Bearer only work when you are holding a shield. 2 - Give Shield Bearer an ability which lasts ~8 turns with a cooldown of ~40 which gives significant . J-Factor's worry that improving shield bearer will help Unarmed too much is a reasonable one. So let's throw out some shield skill options which actively require a weapon. Like: 3 - Shield Skill which gives you a chance for a "follow-up" buff. This buff increases your weapon attack damage for the next couple turns. 4 - Shield Skill which gives a chance to initiate a blinding flash-like aoe stun when you crit with a weapon.
Just one empty hand, or both? The Unarmed skill would need a huge boost in power if they couldn't carry anything at all in either hand. I know for me, Tome/Shield is pretty much the only way to keep up with damage on the later levels without getting pummeled to death. Granted, Master of Arms fixes many of the pummeling problems, but not the damage ones.
1) Make Shield Master require a shield Because that makes carrying a shield that much better. Nerfing an existing skill by making it require an item doesn't actually improve shields in any measurable way. All it does is make an underpowered item required for an underpowered skill. It does nothing to increase the power of shields. I agree that the game needs more interesting shields, and I like your ideas. Tortoise Maneuver is a horrible skill and needs lots of love.
I think that, since shields are supposed to be something to block the opponent's attack with so that we'll be able to attack him (hopefully) without his weapon interfering, and to bash your opponent's body parts with to unbalance him, it would be good if shields actually had some pseudo-defensive procs, which could (because procs can do that) increase in potency if we had some buffs from Shield Bearer active, and there could also be some shields that had such procs that dealt return damage when you block hits, with said damage minimally scaling with block. Generally speaking, it's not that difficult (though it'll take time) to make shields more potent by giving them procs that are stronger if you have some skill from Shield Bearer active. The problem there is making procs that would actually be interesting enough for the players, and potent enough to make the whole thing worthwhile without becoming too strong. And I think it would actually be the right direction - making it so that about 40% of shields' powers lied in various procs that increased in potency as you progressed through the Shield Bearer tree (with the procs being weaker if you had no Shield Bearer, so much that your shield only had about 75~80% of its potency if you used it without skill, but about 120~125% if you got to the last level of Shield Bearer), with said tree having 2 or 3 "power-ups" for that. Heck, I'll go even further (you can now grab the pitchforks and torches) and say that it should happen to any other "pseudo-weapon" we can equip (like books and orbs), each of them dependant on a relevant (most probably custom-made) skill tree for that. That being said, I think we should pester Nicholas for a trigger parameter that would allow us to make something dependant on having a skill (and not an active buff) to work.
Just so we're clear, do you mean "skill" as in Shield Bearer, or "ability" as in Defensive Bash? Skills are the things you take at the start of the game. Abilities are what you take when you level up. When communicating this request to Nick we should make sure we ask for the right thing. I think you mean ability. Even if not, I think the feature should be designed with abilities in mind. We need to be careful, because it may not be a requirement that abilities have unique names. Some mod could have an ability with the same name as another. Whereas skill names are required to be unique. When designing how this trigger is specified in the XML it might be best to use the skill name, and a skill level number instead of an ability name. Something like this (which has been designed just like the existing required buff trigger.) <effect type="trigger" requireSkillOnTrigger="1" requireSkillOnTriggerName="Shield Mastery" requireSkillOnTriggerLevel="3" .../> requireSkillOnTriggerLevel would default to 0 which means it would work right away without putting any points in the skill. If it's not obvious, it would also trigger if your skill is higher than the specified level.
Why? With unarmed you are using your foot, not your hands. I can understand requiring you to not have a weapon equipped, but certainly not shields, orbs, or tomes.
Well to be fair, unarmed is usually played sword and board (tome + shield) I'd imagine. At least that's how I'm playing it right now. And it's great fun and good damage. I think with proc I do about 80 damage a hit or so. So I'm not sure I quite understand the concerns over buffing unarmed too much. Now, with tomes you need/should maintain spell power. Which means you should avoid all the massive heavy armor that includes all the block and need a shield and shield bearer to hit 100 block and need the block to survive. So here is a gish character that benefits from going sword and board. Now one thing we could do is make this style of play work for other weapon lines with the following. 1) Add 2 weapons in each line that is not staves that have a proc that does damage which scales to spell power. 2) Add 2 shields or so with this in mind. Perhaps a high level one with 12 block and perhaps 4 spell power and a mid level one with 9 block and 2 spell power. Also, I think balance in this game should not be about making everything equal but about making everything viable. You can beat the game wearing a shield. And DL 2-9 or so is probably easier with a good shield and your best weapon so far than dual weild regardless of whether a shield is unecessary at DL 12 or so with your obscenely OP character. Maybe the focus should be on making the low level shields A LOT better. A good 2 armor and 4 block added to all the mid level and low level shields would make them pretty strong.
