Let me explain how I’d see the transition to this. At first glance, it shouldn’t be too hard, but I’m not the one who does the coding and has to work on it. For starters, separate the blocking action into two components - melee and projectile. General blocking means both of these components at the same time. So, the shields would remain as they are, with general blocking capabilities, but weapons would gain melee blocking. Having two weapons should combine the melee blocking chance and having a two-handed weapon should have more damage blocked, when compared to one-handed or daggers. Thus, all your weapons and shield should combine into a total melee and projectile blocking chance. This would allow builds without a shield (or even those with one) to become a bit more defensive, since blocking melee attacks was often done with melee weapons in the real world.
Short answer: no.
Long answer: Block is a mechanic in grim dawn to reserved for shields to set it apart from other melee and ranged play styles. If any melee weapon can block damage, why play shields when you can dual wield and have more damage? Not to mention skills, components, devotions, etc. that all rely on chance on block would have to be totally reworked.
Defensive ability, damage absorption, damage reduction, dodge, fumble, all of these are so much better as defensive layers than block chance. All of the classes have access to most of those listed (some more than others) whereas block is hardly supported in the class tree.
If you look at how defense is calculated in GD, damage blocked from shield comes before resistances meaning if a an attack would deal 2000 damage to you (after resistances) and your shield only blocks 1000 damage, you would instead take 1800 damage. This is why almost all builds using shields treat them like an offhand that gives you access to shield specific skills and devotions (ex. Safeguard from Oathkeeper).
Thanks for the reply, I haven’t read it entirely yet, but I will after I address this part. You’d still want to play a shield-based character so you can also block projectiles (and have more damage blocked, because a melee weapon should block a smaller value), a thing that would still be inaccessible to builds without a shield. But a build without a shield should still be able to block melee attacks only.
Yes, this would mean that skills that are triggered by “block” will be accessible to all builds that hold a melee weapon. They wouldn’t be accessible to ranged builds, though. If you want to reserve these triggered skills for shield-based characters only, you simply swap the condition from “general block” to “projectile block”. I don’t see that much rework to be done, except to change the trigger condition if it’s important to keep the skills available only to shield-based characters. The amount of melee damage blocked by melee weapons can be added per weapon category in the database. For example, daggers have 10% block chance and block 50 damage, while swords have 25% block chance and block 100 damage.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining here about anything, I simply LOVE this game and there are little to no things that bother me about it. I simply proposed some additions to it, which would make it more realistic and the builds more useful. I understand if it implies a lot of changes, but in my mind there should always be a simpler solution for most things and if this was my game, I’d constantly expand it to make it even better than before. Because why not?
Because the game engine is as old as i am and “simple changes” actually are not simple.
I can see where you’re coming from and i think it would be an interesting change, however, what you are proposing is a bit too similar to existing defensive layers to me.
I for one plan to play this (as in this exact game) until I’m old. If it weren’t for this game, I’d still play diablo, which is much much older. There is no such thing as “too old” for a game and why would you plan to make a new one when this one is as perfect as it can get and can always be improved/patched to become even better? If you want to make more money from it, simply add a new expansion, a new class, new gear etc. Based on the current classes and gear, I created more than 50 (pretty unique) builds, but only played a few so far. And there are 50 more possibilities that I haven’t yet explored, I’m sure.