Are non-retal shield users punished for not going retal in regards to devotion power balance?

I’m playing a shield character, but I’m not focusing retaliation. It is discouraging to me that there is so much retaliation damage tied to shield devotions and gear. I was just wondering if those of us that want to use shield, but not retal, is punished for this. In that that the devotion nodes for shield, are possibly balanced on utilizing both.

Meaning that if a devotion point had say, 10% block chance 500 retal. The devs could have given 12% block chance, if the retal wasn’t counted towards the power of the node. I hope you see what I’m getting at.

As a min/maxer I’m just wondering from a game balance standpoint, if we are being “punished” for not going retal in that shields are balanced down due to the retal bonuses.

Edit: The same principle applies to devotion nodes that grants bonuses to both pets and the player.

problem being for most non-retal shield builds you probably aren’t benefiting that much from the shield defensively, which means most shield/“on block” devos wouldn’t be all that great anyway

even for something like aegis or blitz/vire it’s fairly easy to end with relative low “shield stats”, so your block/“devo factor” isn’t all that great anyway, and there are better devo paths - treating teh shield skill like a regular dmg/offensive attack skill and regarding the shield as just a stat stick like if it were an offhand/weapon

meanwhile if you remove retal, you just gimp retal, and that fest probably has to end at some point :sweat_smile:

In short, yes. It’s a common opinion among buildmakers that shields are retal’s thing, because it is the only playstyle that benefits offensively from shields, from the obvious devotion align to the less obvious fact that a green retal MI shield with retal affixes will provide more flat retal than all other gear slots combined. If you see a non-retal build use a shield then it is for either of these reasons:

  1. Part of the set, e.g. Spellscourge. The condition is both shield and all-piece bonus need to be absolutely badass, otherwise people will find ways to use all pieces except shield. Octavius for example is commonly used without a shield on 2H Forcewave and physical runes builds.
  2. Main skill requires a shield, e.g. Aegis of Menhir, Blitz, cooldown Forcewave. These just can’t help it.
  3. Shield has some good item skill modifiers. E.g. Scarab Shell, Vampiric Bonewall, Fleshwarped Bulwark have good enough modifiers that make them competitive.

Mind you that even in these cases builds actually do not build around shields, e.g. stacking %block chance, recovery, damage blocked, etc. They go for same offensive devotions, augments and components as any other build. Same for retal - what retal does is stacking retal, shield stuff just happens to be conveniently placed on same constellations as retal bonuses.

If none of the above checks out then in 100% cases the non-retal build in question will be better with caster offhand or DW.

Current state of shields is unclear. After the initial fascination with them two years ago on the release of Forgotten Gods, and several early balance passes, shields had fallen out of builder’s focus for almost 1.5 years and had been stagnant until relatively recently. For that whole period of time retal was strong while non-retal shield builds were considered a joke.

For the last few patches there’s a noticeable effort to nerf retal while helping non-retal shield builds somehow. In my opinion it didn’t succeed much. The balance changed, the fact that retal is still married to shields while non-retal avoid them like plague did not.

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  1. Meme reasons. Most important. Also being able to use cool Shield illusions.

I’d say someone considering meme factor and cool illusions as significant reason to use them is quite telling in it’s own way :rofl:

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I see. Thanks for explaining :slight_smile:

IMO there should be shield devotions for non-retal builds.

How come people “don’t care” about shield as a defense? Is it that weak endgame? My first melee character that reached elite had no chance of surviving more than 3 seconds in melee. My second character that reached elite used a shield, and the targo devotion. It made me from paper to untouchable. So this really makes me confused as to why people don’t use shields as a defense.

I’m a relatively new player that only play HC btw. So I guess in my context things change abit dunno.

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You could always start a suggestion thread for this. Korvaak might be a good candidate for some shield bonuses for a few reasons:

  • It’s an under-utilized devotion, mostly because it is rather underwhelming in the way it tries to be very generic - so it doesn’t do anything particularly well. It’s not terrible, though (>100% generic damage boost, 5%OA, some crit, tier 1-2ish proc)
  • Because it is generic, I could see adding a % shield block or similar. This would be useful for non-retaliation shield skills, etc.
  • Requirements are significant blue/yellow which could actually fit in well with current defensive paths (typically blue), but not influence retaliation. It would be hard to get combos like Korvaak+Vire or Obelisk or a combo of the other %retal nodes due to point demands.

In SR it’s nothing special because enemy growth is uncapped, so while a shield will make you somewhat tough there would be a point when it’s just not good anymore. SR90+ strictly favours active defense (temporary immortality mechanics), good damage and good piloting as opposed to passive defense of a shield.

As for Crucible it’s played as speedrun mode and build’s strength is measured in how fast it clears it, so it favours glassy builds with good AoE, which is the opposite of what shield build offers.

That’s not even bringing up that shields without Overguard are still very much a probability-based defense, so even if the damage blocked was upcapped it would still be about as good as x% chance to dodge an attack, with cooldown to boot. Any weak instance of damage can send your shield into recovery and it’ll bypass the following lethal damage, and you as a player got no control over it. Moreover IIRC there are even some cases when shields are bypassed, like damage pools and such. Now count in that it doesn’t matter how little damage you receive if you can’t heal it off, adding the fact that sustain in this game largely comes from lifeleech, which means the more damage you have the better your sustain is, and going for shields hurts your damage output.

It doesn’t surprise me in particular that shields help you in campaign because that’s what they were balanced for.

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I’d say it’s the opposite - Obelisk of Menhir and Shieldmaiden need to have some +% all damage.

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Thanks again, very informative. That pretty much covers everything I was wondering about. Cheers.

korvaak is far from terrible, it’s an amazing devo only held back by it’s huge affinity requirement, most being the “weaker” blues,
and still if one can swing the blues without sacrificing too much, the devo proc makes it completely worthwhile

thing is, it’s not just in endgame shield is basically defensively useless. but even in leveling
it depends entirely on how you made your chars, resistance attention, armour rating etc etc
But if you make a “shield character” while leveling, and don’t include soldier/overguard, or at minimum OK for some tiny block/armour, then every single character can get better benefits from a weapon or an offhand, even as far as for “defensive” purposes
The sole benefit a shield has during leveling, as a non-shield class, is that its affix pool makes it likely to come with either phys res or DA, that’s it. You don’t really get much passive block or recovery on items, which is needed to get a decent defensive benefit.

And as for devos you can grab circuit breakers or sustain devos that would be more helpful, than ex how expensive shieldmaiden is for relative minimal defence boost
Even with shield offensive skills, Aegis, Blitz, Vire, Shatt Smash, you’re still better off going the offensive devo route in leveling, while including ex sustain or minor defensive procs, than going deep into actual shield oriented devos, because they are just overall weaker, and kinda expensive too

It’s kinda strange, but for most approaches a shield isn’t really a “shield” in GD :sweat_smile:, more like something out of WWE; grabbing a “table” and bashing the opponent in the face with it :joy:

Stupid_Dragon nails it down perfectly. To really make your Shield into a competitive defensive layer you have to heavily invest in Block Rate/Block Recovery/Damage Blocked. Soldiers and to a lesser extent Oathkeepers obviously get the easiest time at this even after some changes long ago nerfed Soldier’s passives and buffed Shieldmaiden so other masteries have a slightly easier time. Even then, I’d only say non-Retal Soldier + X builds around Shields get insofar with making them feel even slightly decent at defense, it’s really just whenever Overguard is active in my experience.

As a trade-off, provided you aren’t using your Shield as part of a skill that uses it for damage like Aegis of Menhir, Blitz, Vire’s Might etc. or for a skill modifier, you are potentially losing a lot of damage by not taking an off-hand, second one-handed weapon or 2-hander instead. This is notable because of the mindset that damage is a defense in it’s own right - if things are dead, they can’t kill you, if you do more damage and life steal back more damage than you are taking and can’t die to one shot or bursts (or have circuit breakers as a fallback or don’t stand in situations you know you can’t survive), you theoretically also shouldn’t die.

Going back to the start, Retaliation gets the bulk of it’s Shield stat bonuses on it’s devotion route to Stone Form and builds in the archetype like Physical often then has to or wants to stack more in equipment pieces like Mythical Anchorite’s Seal to push for 100% block chance/recovery for it’s virtual immortality. Not something non-Retal can afford without your damage getting shanked even further.

The real main selling point to taking a Shield I can think of for non-Retaliation builds beyond item sets and niche skill bonuses/modifiers is Physical resistance. Certain MI shields that have Physical resistance as a base like the Warden’s Fortress and the right prefix can push up to ~30% Physical resistance which is huge and doesn’t require poking around with your block stats.

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Hah, virtual immortality from 100% shield block/recovery is a myth. Did that when Spellscourge still had bonuses to Overguard, 100% block, recovery and smth like 8-9k damage blocked with OG. It indeed was kind of durable, but as it had only Menhir’s Will and some regen for sustain it was very much mortal because I still took some damage somehow. More importantly it was slow and boring as fuck.

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Missed this earlier. Fully agree, I wouldn’t mind if the +% Internal Trauma and flat Internal Trauma damage were replaced in both cases with say +50% to all damage. Some more on Obelisk would also be appreciated.

The only times I’d ever think to go for these on something that isn’t Retaliation would be if I want an on Block proc to be a core part of the character. E.g., in some previous builds, I opted for Shieldmaiden on a Chaos Targo’s Hammer Witchblade and considered (but ultimately decided against) it on an all Morgoneth procs (Nightshard notably, full Morgoneth set proc, Morg legs + boots) Ritualist. Both were complete “for fun”, non-serious memes and didn’t pan out the way I would’ve liked for wildly different and amusing reasons.

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There are two main uses of shields outside of retal - use them for their skill mods and in caster builds as basically glorified (and heavier) off-hands and invest solidly in shield block chance/recover rate for tanks.

Aegis of Menhir is versatile shield skill, also few shields have cooldown reduction and even energy regeneration suitable for casters.

For full tank you want Soldier class for sure and maybe pair it with Oathkeeper. You’ll have naturally very high armor, together with blocking ability, you can made impenetrable slow moving tank.

But if you put shield and don’t go either way, you can expect underwhelming results.

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If you’re physical and using a shield, you might as well grab Obelisk. It’s 3 blue more than you’re already getting to take Scales and Azrakaa, and probably has more utility than Oleron. Most of these builds use CDR skills anyway, so stone form does have more utility than it seems at first glance. Something like this is what I use on a Markovian warlord, for example.

I would agree that having a little non-retal damage on the way to stone form would be a neat boost to blitz and aegis, since they’re medium at best right now.

Let’s be honest here, that’s mainly on you for not investing in life steal/health regen than the shield’s fault. Perma overguard builds with sustain are insanely durable. I facetanked callagadra on a budget warlord with perma overguard (can’t think of other budget builds that can do something like that). It is just that it is a lot of investment to be tanky while your big brother (retal builds) have almost the same tankyness paired with a lot of damage as well.

In summary, shield builds are really tanky with Shield Maiden, Obelisk, life steal/regen, and when overguard is up. When overguard is down, then all that investment doesn’t feel that good.

Also let’s not pretend tanky characters (that sacrifice damage for it) are popular in most arpg games. Unfortunately, usually shields are only popular when they are op.

Agree 100%. Shield builds need more damage imo. Being immortal with no damage is both boring and not healthy for the game.

Agree 100%. Endgame just doesn’t reward being tanky to various instances of moderate amounts of damage. If that dangerous hit lands, you are still in trouble. Crucible, the other alternative for endgame, is all about maxing out damage while having just enough defense to survive it. If shield builds had more damage, then they could compete. Markovian’s and Octavius warlords are some S&B builds that can do decent crucible times.

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Fair on all points.

In my defense I can only tell it was specifically a “what if I go all in shield” test, it was a Battlemage rather than Warlord, main damage was Devastation with defunct %weapon damage skill modifier, it was long ago when balance was different and camera abuse wasn’t known so multiple bosses were pulled.

Facetanking ultimate Calla on budget WL is impressive tbh. Most impressive is that you have it in you to finish that fight with damage output like that.

“Tanky” is relative though, deep SR builds are “tanky” builds that sacrificed damage compared to crucible speedrun builds. It’s natural that people go with some comfortable for them level of tankiness and the rest goes into damage.

But viability of excessively tanky builds isn’t the same as viability of shields. In theory shields could had been viable if they secured you a degree of protection, so that you could had looked for extra damage elsewhere and ended up with a relatively normal build, just built in a different way. In practice in Grim Dawn shield’s baseline degree of protection is only somewhat enough for campaign, and if you go for shield devotions and components to make it viable you exhaust your options to improve damage.

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I was impressed too because the damage of the build was not great. I think that the fact that I almost didn’t have to kite helped my dps considerably. I had something between 50-60k dps tooltip for unbuffed RF. It took a while indeed: something between 10-20 minutes (I don’t remember exactly) and I had to run away one time to re-access my strategies. I also used all the farma I could afford and switched augments and components to counter calla specifically (high pierce overcap, phys res, armor). I will try to reproduce a similar build again to see how it looks now (e.g. Mark of Voracious One got buffed) and maybe record the fight, but I really don’t miss the experience I had.

I agree with your point. Every deep shard build indeed sacrifices some damage to survive. The issue is that CDR casters can kite and abuse defensive mechanics (looking at you spellbinder) with a lot less investment than a “tanky” S&B melee. To me, the term “tanky” makes more sense to that sturdy class that can stand his ground for a while or even facetank hard content (of course, this becomes extremely difficult in high shards). Of course, there is always retal which can facetank stuff and still kill it impressively fast. If you can facetank hard content while the mob has fevered rage on, then balance failed I guess.

Agree. Standalone shields were probably balanced with the campaign in mind. You could make endgame standalone shields tankier to not break the balance of the campaign, but maybe then overguard becomes broken. I also think that the best way to adress it is give S&B more damage, since retal gets same tankability while having significant more damage.