I was reading the "It ain't easy being melee" topic in the general forum when I can across the user TheKirkUnited saying he/she beat the game with the build Master of Arms, Smithing, Tinkering, Shield Mastery, Unarmed, Burglary, and Assassination. In this post he/she said... So I eagerly went to build my own unarmed build and had to decide between Master of Arms and Shield Bearer. I first I was worried it might be difficult but Master of Arms is WAY better. That seems kinda odd because its much rarer for melee to use shields rather than dual wield. I would think shield bearer would have some nice incentive to help shields but at the very least be equal to master of arms. Lets do a run down: Level 1: Squire of the Shield VS Thick Skin Both give 3% block but Thick Skin also gives +5 health Level 2: Duck and Cover! VS Suit Up Both give 1% block but Suit up also gives 1, so passive wise Suit Up wins. Duck and Cover! gives a nice 20% chance of a buff that gives 2 armour, 10 block, 1, and 4 hp regen that last 24 turns however it also lowers melee power and nimbleness by 1. Suit Up gives you buff that last 3 hits that gives +2 armour, 4 block, and 1 hp regen. I would say Duck and Cover!'s buff is better but I would prefer the given buff without penalty. Level 3: Defensive Bash vs Walk it Off Again Master of Arms gives better passive (it does this every level). 1 Block vs 1 Block and 5 health. Defensive Bash is quite nice with its knockback however it only does 6 + .1* magic power, which its unlikely a melee will have the magic power to make that do damage (why is this magic power and not melee power?). It also knockbacks 3 tiles and paralyzes for 3 turns. Not helpful for melee but nice on unique monsters to deal ranged damage. Walk it Off gives a 12% on hit to gain a massive 10 hp regen for 6 turns. If you get 4 hp regen plus Walk it Off thats 1 hp regen per turn which is very helpful for meleeing zoos . Level 4: Tortoise Maneuver vs It only makes you Stronger Master Arms passively gives 1 armour while Shield Bearer only gives 1 block. Tortoise Maneuver is probably more helpful here with +2 armor +5 block +4 hp regen but its only for 2 hits and takes 36 turns to cool down. It only makes you Stronger gives you a 15% to get 1 1 burliness 4 health for 80 turns (!!!). Level 5: Shield Savant VS Master of Arms These are only passive bonuses and master of arms wins again. Master of Arms gives 2 armour, 2, and 3 block while Shield Savant gives 1 armour, 2 , 4 block, and 1 Stubbornness. The problem is that Master of Arms gives more armour (and it should in my opinion) and pretty much the same block as Shield Bearer. Block isn't even that useful for melee because a fully decked out Melee player can easily get +50 block for just set stats on their armor, adding in artifacts and stats and its pretty easy to surpass the 75%+ range without the skill. What I would like to see is Shield Bearer adding in resistance to make it more effective. Level 2 giving +1 Level 3 giving +1 Level 5 giving +1 +1 :resist_blasting:
I have the opposite opinion, although it mostly applies to builds that max out . Agreed, this level sucks. Master of Arms also has a better starting item. Suit Up is useless because of the limited # of hits. Any stray spell or monster dealing even 1 point of exotic damage will eat this buff up. The most you can realistically out of this ability is saving 6 every 40 turns. Don't even think about using this during a zoo. Duck and Cover! is the opposite - it stays up for an entire zoo because during its 24 turns duration it can refresh itself. This gives you a reliable 10 2 and most importantly 4. You need 12 for 1/turn healing on Going Rogue. Once you get to 8 from gear and other abilities, Duck and Cover! becomes a 20% chance to heal 24. Compare that to Walk It Off's 12% chance of healing 6. All this in exchange for a very minor decrease in your offense ( 1 is nothing and 1 is a single point of damage). Walk It Off seems similar to Duck and Cover! but the 6 turn duration cripples it. Sure, if you're not focusing on it's a nice bump in healing during a zoo (approx 0.72/turn) but it doesn't provide the massive in-between combat healing that Duck and Cover! provides. Defensive Bash is amazing for melee players. No one cares about the damage - it's all about the 100% guaranteed 3 turn stun (ignoring ). The knockback isn't 3 tiles (the 'amount' attribute in the XML is meaningless) - it's usually 1~2 or sometimes none at all. Either way, monsters or a wall can block the knockback giving you a chance for a free pummeling on a named monster. A+ ability, better than Killing Blow by a long shot. It Only Makes You Stronger's buff is underwhelming. 4 is useless aside from unlikely hypothetical life-or-death situations. 1 is nothing. 1 is (usually) nothing if you're wearing decent armor. Tortoise Maneuver is another key part of builds. If your gear gives you 4 (two Emerald Encrusted Rings) and you have Duck and Cover! up, this ability becomes a 24 heal. That's about it for usefulness - it has the same problem as Suit Up. Both boring for a final level. Typically a point-dump once you've maxed out every other interesting skill.
Haven't checked, did 1.0.10 make it so you actually need a shield for Shield Bearer? In 1.0.9 everything worked without one -- passives, procs and skills alike.
Huh I check out shield bearer a bit more and I guess I was wrong. Duck and Cover! is an amazing ability. That plus celestial circle is 9 hp regen which is just massive. Just another 4 hp regen (tortoise maneuver/ 2 emerald encrusted rings) and you got 1 hp per turn.
I think both points are good - but the big benefit is what happens when you take both sets. is a straight% to block a hit. So as it increases, the relative value of each goes up. Consider this: Going from 0 to 1 means you are now hit by 1% fewer hits (not very significant). Going from 90 to 91 means you are now hit by 10% fewer hits! (Very significant!). The point is - if you are focused on getting your block score up, a few extra points from another tree is VERY GOOD. I've made a character who got 116, and just walked through most of the game.
Not exactly true as stated. The number of hits where you fail to block goes down by 10%, where as the you phrased that it implied the number of hits you actually do block goes up by 10% which is a false assertion. The percentage increase of blocked hits caused by each subsequent point of block actually goes down with each additional point of block. The percentage decrease of hits failed to block does go up with each additional point of , but the statement of "Going from 90 to 91 means you now block 10% more hits!" is technically inaccurate and very misleading. In other words: you were failing to block 10 hits out of every hundred, now you fail to block 9 out of 100. 9 is 10% lower than 10, but that's not the same thing as what you said. It's still only 1 more blocked hit out of every 100 attacks. The percentage increase of blocked hits is actually just +1.1% more hits being blocked. I block a lot of hits, and I'll probably not even be able to notice 1 more point. Compare that to your second point of block. Going from 1 to 2 means you now block +100% more hits, but it does not mean you block 100% of hits. I was blocking 1 hit out of 100, now I'm blocking twice as many! But I still don't block very much. Percentages and statistics can be misleading. That doesn't change the truth of your initial premise: that Master at Arms vs Shield Bearer is a false dichotomy. Whether one is slightly better than the other only matters if you can only choose one of them, but in truth choosing both for the same character is very viable. Feels really weird questioning anything J-Factor presents as fact about Dredmor's workings, but here goes... What's your source on "the 'amount' attribute in the XML is meaningless"? Since all knockbacks have a chance of failure, I guess I would have expected that the amount=3 means that the game makes 3 'rolls' to see if the target is knocked back. So it doesn't necessarily knock them back 3 spaces, but it is less likely to fail to knockback. Forgive me if my recollection is wrong, but didn't Raust use a high amount value on one of the Swift Striker skills to make it more reliable? It's been a few weeks since the last time I used SwiftStriker, but IIRC at least one of the powers seemed to have a really potent knockback. Maybe that wasn't from "amount" though? I could be mistaken. Or I could have just had good luck with the RNG.
Don't take what I say as the gospel truth. I've been wrong before - I just try to relay as much of the stuff I think I know from all the time I've spent testing/playing. I've just been assuming it has no effect. Reasoning: Throwing Buffalo has an 'amount' of 1 but seems to knock between 0-2 spaces. Psychokinetic Shove has an 'amount' of 3 but doesn't seem to have a significant increase over Throwing Buffalo The devs added two 'knock' effects to Monster Toss in an effort to make it less terrible, rather than just increasing the 'amount' Someone should test this perhaps.
You can try setting the amount in the XML to something really high on ability and then testing that ability. I would tend to concur with J-Factor, as personally my own very limited testing of knockback amount value in the XML showed no noticeable difference. This kind of math appears flashing and important, but it is really just like abusing statistics. The reality is 1% more blocked hits is exactly 1% more blocked hits no matter where it is gained on the spectrum from the first 1% to the last 99>100%. Personally I would say that the last 1% to 'cap out' (if that's actually technically possible in dredmor, which it may not be?) is the only real significant jump of significance because it would negate random chance. This isn't specifically related to the % size changing, however.
You are correct - I meant to say referring to "attacks which hit you" and not "attacks you block." Fixed.
I may have jumped the gun when I said you should never take both of these. With a focused warrior build with tons of armor from items they might be redundant but, after looking at the skills a bit they actually seem more useful to a character who actually doesn't wear much armor since the bonuses are in no way reliant upon what you are actually wearing. Taking both might be an excellent choice in a more rogueish build so you can focus more on dodge stats or just to free up your inventory slots for other fun equipment items rather than simply stacking AA and block.
Actually, I found that focusing on made pretty unimportant. Since a blocked hit reduces normal damage by 75%, 10 or 15 pretty much means you never take normal damage. If your block % is low, then AA is super awesome. But for a defensive build, it ends up being less important.
As I said, none of the knockback spells/abilities are significantly better than each other. I just tested it now with an amount of 100 and there was no difference.
