One thing that has been very consistent for at least 1.5 years already (so both late FG and early FoA we’re experiencing now) is that there’s borderline no SnB builds being posted.
I could only remember about 5 of them during this timeframe.
The most successful was of course latest top20 retaliation warder.
Currently berserkers with Onslaught (and occasional werewolves) seem to be the flavor of the month(s) (understandably, the new shiny) and dual wielding is the way to go because most WPS work really well with DW.
We even had a thread discussing how 2h AA is lagging behind in power compared to DW.
Well, at least people remembered and cared enough about 2h to create such a thread.
Which inspired me to make this just as I was typing:
Now, I think the most crucial issue of using a shield is the fact the block is quite a bad defense mechanic. Especially in the current meta of ADCtH where you just leech the damage done to you; and the more damage you deal the better that works; and the most DPS (within AA types) is DW.
So the choice to go S&B instead is bad from both damage perspective (once again, fair) and survivability perspective (which is not very good to say the least). There’s not even an opportunity cost.
That’s the point of discussion if you’re willing to participate and have something to say.
Meanwhile if you have any decent S&B cooked, be it just AA or RtA, please share. I’m curious to see what people come up with.
Speaking broadly but yeah the common sentiment is shield builds don’t feel thaaaat tanky for how much dps you give up. That being said, they are more popular in HC, so I think the SC “deaths are permissible” mindset does make us discount their defensive value a bit.
I think the main points are:
Shields can feel really bad without soldier or oathkeeper. Maybe some skill modifiers should be to block chance and recovery on other class buffs. Idk
A lot of shields I think don’t give enough armor/phys res/max res and health to weigh against dropping the shield and going for dps. In GD the difference between getting one shot, two shot, or three shot, is very significant. 2k more HP on a build can make a world of difference on what it survives vs what it doesn’t.
Shield builds tend to give up attack and cast speed, and this greatly weakens your sustain from adcth.
Here are some Chinese builds that have pushed very high in SR with shields.
I’ll preface this by saying that I lack the experience to call myself a true min maxer, and I never really dabbled with high SR or any superbosses before FoA. One of my favorite builds from FoA is bleed S&B primalist using the Wooly Boneguard. I’ve had alot of fun with it, and used it to clear Ravager, Callagadra and FoA Mogdrogden, and gone up to SR35. Also handles dread on 0 altar fine but I admittedly haven’t experimented with the altar materials much yet.
It doesn’t feel particularly tanky compared to a 2h build, but I’ve been meaning to test it with a similar shield with the enduring prefix instead.
My most recent character build utilizes the classic earthsplitter/grey knight combo but with jarldin to get another damage type in the mix.
Still somewhat WIP as im not 100% done yet, so resistances might need some more juggling for more overcaps and i could still try an alternate devotion setup with ulzaad and see how that fares. But first id probably replace the belt with the generic ugdenbog one or even drop the first RR ring for another devourer to have a bit more headroom. Also no single ascension yet.
Id say so far it performs extremely well so its worth mentioning here. SR 30/31 you plain oneshot every nemesis and dread is like 20 seconds without altair depending on your critluck, to give a point of reference.
Just a screenshot of forcewaves damage composition here without any buffs/proccs:
Now add those 3 onslaught stacks on top and … boom Regular crits between 3-4 million (largest was slightly above 4k) and dots are in the 2.5-3.5 million range as well.
Next project is probably getting a S&B autoattack build to work in such a way that it competes with top DW builds, and i recently had an idea which im going to try out.
My main build for FoA so far has been a S&B IT Forcewave battlemage, and it’s cleared Uber Nerf (albeit, long and protracted battle after he enraged at 40% lol) and comfortably plays just about all content with minimal chance of dying to my poor piloting (haven’t tried SR past 40 and Uber Nerf wasn’t altar’d up, but everything else has been pretty solid). It doesn’t do like half the damage of an optimized build, but it’s served me quite well in my quest to play SC like it’s HC for cowards.
That said, it’s using a shield just because that’s the way to maximize my DoT forcewave damage, and it picked up Shieldmaiden mostly for flat IT damage (before Soldier buffs added a lot of flat IT to Decorated Soldier; I’ve been too lazy to look at it and swap around as I’m not big on damage optimization), so it’s more a build that happens to use a shield for its damage rather than a dedicated sword-and-board build. If there was a 1h with a bigger forcewave multiplier, I’d be looking to DW that instead.
Right now, it feels like most of the payoff for shields is in access to large amounts of physical resist, rather than the block gimmick. This gets 100% block chance with Elixir+Reverrum+Terrobullum up, but I honestly don’t feel much difference from that compared to the iron bits or movespeed modifiers I use for QoL in 99% of content.
I’ve played around with 100% block + 100% block time reduction (so you won’t just die to a shotgun) and it’s a significant defense, but it’s never felt worth the investment for me. You end up giving up enough damage that even I notice it, and the odd thing that isn’t blockable for some weird reason (Moosilauke archers, Aleksander meteor, etc) really sucks too.
Probably just need to go through things shield by shield.
What do you all think about the totally normal “shield” maces? I don’t think I’ve seen them utilized in builds but I also haven’t looked very hard. I figure if any weapons should strongly support shield builds it’s them.
Shield adds two more stats to build around - Block chance and Block recovery. This isn’t necessarily a good thing because it means you have to divert resources away from other defensive or offensive stats to make it work, meaning you end up with (best case scenario) the same thing as if you didn’t have a shield, or (most of the time) worse. It is only worth it if you go all in on defense and stop caring about damage.
Most of the time that is, the few times that shields are good in this game are when they are specialized to do something only it can do, which is why this comment by doom
Is probably the best way to go through it. I’ll start with a few ones that do work right now (hard to find links right now at work but I’ll direct anyone interested on where to search):
Octavius w/ forcewave - i hate forcewave and the build doesn’t have the best damage right now but this is one of the tried and true s&b builds since FG when it was introduced. It also got new life added to it with Beronath’s Howl relic so it gets onslaught stacks. Aegis part used to suck and it probably still does but aegis did get some love. I just haven’t tried it in FoA. Build is somewhere in my youtube channel but it was a bit old around august I think.
Spellscourge - also one of those sets that got feedbacked so much into viability back then. Also doesn’t have much damage but enough to warrant playing s&b and it’s very tanky too while enabling a unique playstyle. It has its problems but still a solid set. Build is somewhere in @romanN1 youtube.
Woolly Voidguard - one of the best new additions in FoA and I think it’ll continue being one of the most popular MIs going forward. It’s just sad it has to have set level number of bonuses just for it to become good. @afanasenkov26 has a build for this in this forum.
Voidsoul - new aegis changes means it’s probably the only top 20 build that still remains in top 20 if we made one now. Really strong build. Build is in @banana_peel youtube.
If you notice, for all of these the shields are really just glorified offhands but wcyd that’s what crate had to do to make shields do some damage. One problem right now is that there are certain skills that makes sense to hit with shield but doesn’t. Starts with C, followed by A, then D, then E, then N, then C, then ends with E.
Shield builds were doing ok for a brief moment when they were doing double the intended dmg with Feral and Shattering Smash. That probably tells a lot.
Most of them are behind other archetypes on dmg, and the shield itself doesn’t provide a good enough defensive boost to go for SnB playstyle. I’m yet to test the new Markovian, I heard it’s pretty strong. But guess what Markovian is? A Blitz based set, and Blitz hits with both hands.
This topic is applicable to both 2H and SnB: global flat applies only one for 1H and 2H attacks, and twice for DW.
Then comes the trickery, patches and crutches: for 2H we now have huge WD multipliers in Shaman for 2H specific WPS; for 2H ranged we’ve had huge multipliers for a long time via bullet count manipulation. Savagery has TDM mod for 2H, Fire Strike has TDM mod for 2H. What have you last seen a good 2H build based on RF? It doesn’t have a TDM mod, so you don’t see them.
What can be done to SnB? Only Smite is now hitting with both hands for shields, and Smite has very poor %chance support and very poor default arc for melee. Shattering Smash was buffed to 270% at hardcap which is good. But now 2H can also use this WPS, and 2H just hits harder with its base. Can we come up with new tricks for SnB?..
I have no idea, why this is the solution. From the outside perspective, it would be much easier to balance the attacking playstyles, if 2H and SnB AA builds had default TDM applied to attacks at higher levels to compensate for benefiting only once from global flat.
Which is fine, IMO.
Well, not the magnitude of a difference we have now, for sure. But as a concept.
I’m ok with DW and 2h doing more damage than S&B.
It’s just that I would like to see shield as a good defensive option. Like a “turtle” or “wall” archetype. Then there would be a real choice: do I want to do damage (and go DW or 2h) or more survivability (then I take shield and accept the fact that I grind enemies by attrition).
Currently, shields don’t even provide much survivability without extra investment.
Sacrificing weapon slot for a shield is already an investment, there is a huge opportunity cost in that.
For example shields could provid substantial defense from the get go. Like, %max resist for all damage types.
Good to know. I didn’t try on the playtest but I didn’t see anything in the patch notes regarding the Feral Hunger/Shattering Smash fix so I assumed it was still there.
As a S&B enjoyer, I would like to see more on block or shield only skills. It could be damage, it could be buff, it could be utility. Whatever makes it interesting to put a shield on my left hand as something else than just a stat stick. We saw some nex toy with FoA, but far from enough for my taste.
But maybe the “better” idea, to not end up with shield becoming pseudo weapon, would be to buff their defensive aspect. Either by buffing health/res as was already said, or by making theme better at blocking. Or just blocking more things. I’m not 100% sure of it, but I believe many monster attack cannot be blocked. Just a bit of balance arround that could help.
For reference, Shieldbreaker. Worse %dmg than Archon, worse tooltip, worse Shattering Smash, worse AA because doesn’t have 1.15 TDM from charges. But 5 seconds faster than Archon for one reason only - relies on a WPS that hits with both hands. Still not good, of course, no item support, need to take a fire helmet and a ranged shield.
I think tdm is not needed, but just make more skills hit with the shield, because what’s that base damage for if not for hitting? We already have an idea how much damage these shields will deal, because we can just look at their DW counterparts.
But looking at the skills, pretty much the only ones I really wanna hit with shield are CADENCE and the soldier wps. The other DARs probably shouldn’t have it, and then the other WD based skills aren’t thematically aligned with shield hitting.
So maaaaybe we need some tdm for shield based attacks, but we need to first establish how much support we wanna five for shields outside of soldier and oathkeeper.
Regular crits between 3-4 million (largest was slightly above 4k) and dots are in the 2.5-3.5 million range as well.
