about to.
Would be my firstie with ravager as well. 2 acts to go
Just go to Cally 
baby steps… ^^
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Based on the responses to my question about shields in the gameplay section and what people are saying in this thread, it seems like shields are powerful and overall pretty balanced within their niche, but their use case is very narrow. It’s not possible to get 100% block recovery without the soldier mastery, and the defensive value of shields without 100% block recovery is mostly negligible. That leaves the following situations for which shields are useful:
Soldiers — If you want to use the shield to actually block you need to take the soldier mastery and invest 100% in block recovery (at huge offensive cost), otherwise block is too inconsistent to matter. The regen builds Contragor mentioned also require soldier, so unless people are overlooking something or have min-maxed and theory crafted away properties that are actually valuable in practice, the defensive utility of shields is solely limited to this one class.
Retaliation Builds — They provide large flat retaliation values that strongly benefit these builds.
Builds that depend on a shield to complete a set or enable a skill — Obviously you can’t use aegis of menhir without a shield.
That leaves sword and board melee, which ought to be a fairly major archetype, seeming pretty niche. What would people recommend changing to make them better? It’s not easy to balance, since 100% block recover is so powerful. I have a few ideas: 1) a modest buff to shattering smash to narrow the gap in DPS between shields and other types of melee. 2) Move some block recovery from overguard to obelisk of menhir. This would allow oathkeepers to hit 100% recovery, with limited uptime, with the absolution relic and possible a shield with the “of barricades” suffix. Presumably soldiers that are aiming for 100% recovery are almost universally going to take obelisk anyway. 3) More build enabling offensive skill modifiers on MI shields for skills that can complement auto attacks, but don’t typically complement soldier sword and board builds (talking out of my ass here, but timered, burst damage or DoT skills that a melee build might take, like ring of steel, phantasmal blades, callidor’s with transmuter, doom bolt, grasping vines, etc.).
Finally, I’ll add that my own experience with shields is limited to using them in the campaign (I’ve never played much of crucible or shattered realm) and regretting it every time, though I’ve never gone full turtle with an overguard build.
I do not object to improving the constellation or the shield itself to improve the usefulness of the shield, but I oppose weakening the overguard. This skill exists to make Shield Soldier more defensive.
When comparing Soldier and Oathkeper as a whole, Soldier is defensive and Oathkeper is aggressive. So it’s not unfair that 100% block recovery is a privilege of Soldier.
I personally would like to have a bit more damage output. Maybe remove the damage reduction from Overguard transmuter. However don’t know if that would be to much.
I understand not wanting to nerf overguard. Here’s my logic:
-Shields should be useful on both soldiers and oathkeepers in various class combos. If you just buff shields themselves, soldier mastery combos will be stronger, but there won’t be a reason to make a sword and board melee oathkeeper except for warlord or retaliation builds.
-If you buff the oathkeeper side, either by buffing the damage you can do with shields, or by buffing their defensive properties other than block, you buff warlords too much relative to other mastery combos. If shields are good compared to other fighting styles on oathkeeper combos other than soldier, imagine how good they will be on warlords.
-So the way to go is to buff shields on oathkeepers but leave them neutral on soldiers. Moving block recovery away from overguard to obelisk accomplishes that, and perhaps the damage penalty on markovian’s defense can be lessened if people feel super tanky soldier builds are no longer worth it.
-I assume that almost everyone who goes for markovian’s defense also goes for obelisk. I could be wrong about that, and that could be a mistake and you should only take one or the other. But if that’s true, it’s not even a nerf to overguard at all, just a buff to shields for other classes, especially oathkeepers, who could then get 100% block recovery and good offense, but with less uptime than soldier shield builds.
I don´t go obelisk with my targo warlord 100% recovery. Would lose too many dmg constellations, and obelisk does not really give me anything important, shield-wise.
Define better. I have no recent data to go on, so I’m refraining from voicing my opinion on the matter. I’m just surprised at ya’s response regarding shields.
I hadn’t realized that the damage spike had increased so tremendously.
But for the record, if I were going a shield build, I’d focus on IT, not auto attacks.
I would like to suggest giving all shields an +%AS (or CS) rather than strengthening a particular mastery. (However, anything that might be used in RAtA Warlord should be excluded.)
All S & Bs I have made so far have never reached the limit of AS(CS). Many of them fall within the range of 1.60-1.80.
By making it possible to raise the AS to the cap, it is possible to improve both the lack of attack and defense.
Good point. For me, I would say clearly useful on more different types of builds. Particularly, I think oath keeper’s shield support should be more meaningful that people say it is and make sword and board a competitive choice outside of specific builds. But I haven’t actually tried to make any characters like that, so I probably should also refrain from making (further) suggestions.
And if you change the principle of the block. That he worked on the principle of “barriers”. That is, it blocked the specified damage for a certain time (for example 0.1 sec).
This will significantly increase the effectiveness of shields precisely as a defense mechanism in order to more effectively compete before assembling for damage through vampirism.
Unfortunately shield spec was nerfed multiple times because as others described it, they were utterly immortal and trivialize basically all contents.
This is probably more of a “for Grim Dawn 2” type of suggestion, but it seems to me the problem is block recovery. I have the feeling that this was designed before other aspects of the combat gelled into their present state. Given the fact that block and recovery applies to DoT ticks, and that in general being hit with multiple small hits is more threatening than single large attacks(shotgun effects, damage pools, etc; this is obvious from the fact that flat absorb has a more noticeable effect on defense than %absorb), shields are too dependent on 100% recovery to be useful. But, block rate and damage blocked values can get extremely high, so once you have 100% recovery, shields suddenly become enormously powerful. If block recovery were simply removed so that shields could always block every attack, it would be easier to balance their effectiveness based just on block chance and damage blocked. That would require completely changing the values of those two stats, though, which doesn’t seem likely at this point in the game’s development.
So I think the only real way to handle this is through itemization. Adding powerful defensive properties for shields other than block and treating shields more as defensive offhands with powerful skill modifiers will make them more attractive. In other words, make more shields look like Bramblevine. Mostly trying to keep those properties away from the Soldier mastery is probably also healthy.
This, especially from res perspective. Maybe it is worth to add various amounts of either elemental or even ‘9res’ (resistances from main char sheet except maybe stun) as a base to each shield grade (amount based on grade, from magic to legendary). Also probably make it ‘on block only’. This will also motivate everyone to max block chance if possible, and go more offensive in augments department.
But, block rate and damage blocked values can get extremely high, so once you have 100% recovery, shields suddenly become enormously powerful.
I think this is the problem of shields. They are too effective in some classes, but not effective in others.
Therefore, here you can do the same as in other gaming characteristics, namely, set the limit to the maximum level.
In this case, raise the total minimal. To shield was a universal way to increase the survival of any class. And not just those who specialize in shields.
Shields are a reliable way to increase the toughness of any character. Naturally, some classes will excel with shields more than others, and that is by design. In the early stages of the game’s development, we actually shifted much of the passive support for shields from Soldier and into the Devotion system so that any class can benefit.
One thing some here seem to be overlooking is that damage can help you survive as much as durability since dead enemies aren’t damaging you, and that is where shields balance out as your damage output suffers in exchange for the greater durability.
There was a time when shield builds did more damage than they do now, and it heavily skewed builds to using shields exclusively for endgame content because it was very safe but cleartimes were also reasonable. We have no interest in returning to such an era.
Shields are in a good place now. Useful, but not critical.
One thing some here seem to be overlooking is that damage can help you survive as much as durability since dead enemies aren’t damaging you, and that is where shields balance out as your damage output suffers in exchange for the greater durability.
Hello.
Do not take this as a dispute or statement, I have not so much experience or knowledge of game statistics.
But according to my personal feelings, I have the opinion that damage + vampirism give more survival, while maintaining the ability to quickly destroy enemies. (Or as much survival as with a shield, but still maintaining the ability to do more damage).
After all, no matter how much damage you take. The main thing is that in the end you still survive the enemy, while killing him faster.
That is, it turns out that it makes little sense to make assemblies with a shield. Only if you just want to play with the shield, without any special meaning.
exactly +1
This has been brought up several times in this thread and the thread asking about shields in gameplay discussion that I started several times. Always as a reason that shields are on the weak side, since they skew too heavily towards defense, to the point that shield builds end up taking more damage in many situations because they can’t clear quickly enough. I’m not saying I agree with that, but there were some people bringing up this very point as evidence that shields were overnerfed.
My only concern, and I must admit that I’m not speaking from a position of deep personal knowledge, is that shields are only worthwhile with maxed block recovery. Certainly, from my own experience, you can’t just slap on a shield and see any noticeable improvement in defense. Oathkeepers have multiple skills supporting shields, but can only attain max block recovery when paired with Soldier. If it’s true that shields are only really useful defensively with maxed block recovery, those skills have an extremely narrow use case (warlords, retal builds, aegis builds, builds with build-defining skill modifiers on the shield). Is the common wisdom expressed here on the boards false, or is that the intended design of those skills? I don’t take what’s posted here, even by very experience players, as gospel, but it does seem shields are a little too dependent on block recovery, and thus soldier, when oathkeeper and itemization for other classes (e.g. skybreach bulwark) ostensibly supports them too.