There is a discussion in the fedback section about the viability of different devos, and a lot of people said how good Targo Hammers are, as opposed to some reporting them being underwhelming. The devo was buffed (and now is a part of playtest) and i tried to meme branch my acid SnB Oppressor into some block via Shieldmaiden, Anvil and Scarab to see how impactful can the hammers be with very high weapon dmg and good block. Answer is: no impact.
This is my block in game. I’d say those are decent values. And if you crunch some numbers you’d expect your max block rate to be 0.4-0.5 sec and by extension you expect to see a new hammer orbiting you each second you are standing in a barrage of enemy attacks.
The disappointing reality is most of the time there is a single sad hammer around me. Sometimes, very rarely, smth happens and i see 4-5 of them. I stuff myself into the most dense crowds and don’t understand, where are my hammers.
I have no idea how block functions in this game and i’m not @mi023 to make a reviewed paper on the topic. I only report the observed reality - the proc sucks, and the devo is useless to almost any build.
If someone knows the recipe to generate millions of hammers (without meme values of perma 100% block chance and recovery) and have them destroying enemies on tape, i’m all eyes.
edit: Sold more dmg for Absolution relic to have very high block numbers. Saw 4 hammers more often but still didn’t feel any impact from them.
To be fair there is also Trample that could receive the same treatment. I’ts also in a weak spot.
There isn’t a lot of builds where On block works well. There are too many good devotions to use.
Actually On attack could make those procs more interesting overall, even for retaliation builds that rely on being hit and strungle killings bosses that don’t hit them.
someone asked recently what block affects, to that there was a standard answer regurgitated (by me) anything that affects dodge/deflect ie melee and projectiles
But, it turns out that not even all projectiles are “projectiles” in the case of block so don’t get affected. What can actually be blocked - #7 by Gnomish_Inquisition
By that i don’t mean pseudo projectiles like we know from Stride, but actual thrown/cast “manually sidestepable” projectiles.
That means a crap ton of non melee attacks wont trigger blocks or Anvil.
Aside from that little mechanical interaction surprise, my personal take has always been you need high block chance/recovery for it to be decent since there is a still a chance to not trigger the block, so that reset needs to happen and “asap” or the block needs to be “ensured”. (eg overguard or absolution)
Without that i don’t think i’ve seen lots of hammers/don’t recall lots of swirlies happening “guaranteed” unlike ex GG/Flame Torrent
In my perception it is not S&B build. You don’t put emphasis on shield as defence layer. It’s literraly, as you say meme. Shield equipet because good stats, and not to defend oneself.
If we want to evaluate the buff, shouldn’t we look at shield oriented builds? May be the same Occulant, but paired with Nightblade for work Pneuma bonus.
the proc is bad even on sth like Spellscourge which has pretty good block stats. (also one kind of a problem is that w/o Soldier or blue-yellow devo pathing shield and block kinda suck.)
i’m guessing that’s that sweet sweet armour interaction causing it, (with addition of no/low bonus dmg from no rata?)
So on raw phys it stands out even more when contrasted with similar effects i’d imagine (GG/torrent/magi rings etc)
*i don’t know if it’s meant to be a “rata only” devo, personally i never understood the trauma inclusion, but i might misunderstand how it works or “how/if it potentially doesn’t conflict with how dot stacking mechanics work”.
How to fix it for phys/dealing with armour, without “blowing it out of proportions” for potential rata builds or other shenanigans would be interesting to see.
But it seems like it’s twice/doubly limited on its intended use then (low trigger rate on medium block builds/no overguard/absolution, and low dmg on raw phys paths)
Feel innocent to be @ here.
Triggered by blocking is much harder than triggered by hit. I think it’s not fault of Anvil, but fault of block mechanism. Many skills/attacks/projectiles cannot be blocked. I cannot clearly specify which skills can be blocked, but some examples can show the narrowness of its applicability.
Example 1: FS, PRM and DEE are similar skills, but only FS can be block. The other two are regarded as AoE skill and cannot be blocked.
Example 2: Nemesis Boss Aleksander, all of his skills cannot be blocked.
Example 3: Nemesis Boss Kaisan, only his AA can be blocked, other skills cannot.
as gnomish and mi023 already mentioned, sad nope. seemingly too much stuff can’t even be blocked, might be worse than dodge in that regard. i made said meme but the block procs aren’t that plentiful and it’s not really that fun to play. at least an anvil hammer can hit enemies several times (though it does collide with projectiles), boar trample is just worse i feel.
the build is bricked because for some reason colossal bulwark now has to convert to aether (not really bricked, i’ll switch to markovians bulwark but still, why do shields convert at all and why this one 50% phys to aether?) anyway, another gripe with offensive block procs (as well as hit procs) is that they always come with crowd control even further limiting the amount of procs you can get in a timely manner. it’s a rather sad affair and my blocker has been on ice for a long time.
I think all “on block” procs should get their values increased drastically, to 50-100% (not sth like 15%).
also there’s that kind of thing that block-enhancing augs are very rare and they never give damage, only defensive stats. so by taking them you’re kinda gimping your offence but getting some questionable defense boost in return. maybe if they were giving even minor damage values, like 35%, it would be a bit better.
What is this funny gatekeeping? I have most of my dmg coming from shield attacks.
As few people mentioned below, shield as a defence mechanics is very bad. I stacked enough %chance to block and recovery, especially with Absolution, to test the Anvil proc, that was the goal. Not to stack 20k dmg blocked and be killed by random aoe anyway.
I mispoke in my first post, i meant that it would help retal builds that rely on being attacked against bosses that DON’T attack you in melee.
I kinda like the IDEA of mi023 of making it on Hit, that would be an improvement.
That said if you look at every devotion procs that have retal damage it’s always about being hit (When hit / On Block).
I really beleive that would be nice to have 1 or 2 procs that rely on you attacking too.
I think that Targo Hammers and Trample could be change to “On attack” but you would need a shield (Require a shield.).
No no no no. There’s too many on attack skills already. (not that I like on block mind you)
Especially if you go physical, you already need to somehow proc the on-crit rr skill. Then you need bear and if you are a retal guy, you’re not going to have much left to put any other on-attack procs on.
Bette would be on-hit (as suggested) with probably a bit of an increased cooldown.
Might be because you have too much DA? So lots of stuff misses you before it gets a chance to be blocked?
I seem to have decent number of hammers usually… I’d say it averages 3. There are times when there aren’t any, due to all the trash dying too quickly before they can attack or with certain bosses.
Not the best build, but I do find it fun to play.
might be the da, though my char is somewhere around lvl 80 and it’s nowhere near and/or i deviated from the theorycraft or i just hoped block would kick in on enemy attack, not actual hit.
I have a rata build that try to use a good amount of block and shield both as offense and defense, and even with 100% block chace and recovery, in the middle of a pack of mobs in SR32, the most that I have seen is maybe 5 hammer? Most of the time there are only 1-2, and the damage is not impressive either… I understand that is not a T3 devotion so the proc can not be “build defining”, but still. I keep Anvil because I love the “flavor”, but otherwise is mid.
I don’t actually know how it works, but I on hit would make sense and it would explain why you’re hardly seeing any. (again, not arguing on-block is good)
Same, but not sure we should expect a million. If you compare it with Guardian’s Gaze, does that get significantly more?
Guardian’s gaze gets significantly more if you bind it to ticking skills like Bloody Pox / Aether Corruption where it ticks several times per second on multiple enemies.
overall i think that flying hammers around you is the only missed opportunity to make as defining skill, but it is probably would be too much copy-paste from Diablo 2.
totally forgot an idea i had how i would try to change these procs in a mod. what if the block procs turned into a sort of buff that spawned a bunch of projectiles over time, kinda like kilrian’s soul proc? that might work better with a low proc rate?
