Meat Shield and Occulant need some skill modifiers. Currently, the only conversion item for Shattering Smash is Obsidian Defender. I feel this change could open up some more WPS sword and board builds.
Suggestion:
Meat Shield
100% Physical Damage converted to Vitality Damage to Shattering Smash
Suggestion:
Occulant
100% Physical Damage Converted to Acid Damage to Shattering Smash
The conversion should change resist reduction aspect of the skill to the respective damage types. Obsidian Defender should have the reduced targets physical resistance changed to chaos as well
+1 for these. Occultant is perfect shield for acid S&B builds
though I’m not sure Meat Shield is right for such build with Oathkeeper. Maybe it can provide more mods for Vitality Vire’s Might, or even Vitality Judgment!
Vitality damage support for judgement sounds interesting, moreover, think maybe giving Meat Shield 100% conversion to Safeguard could work too; Similar to how Namadea’s Eye grants 100% Piercing Damage converted to Vitality Damage to Ranged Expertise. That would cover conversion for all the the skills. That might be too broad in scope and open it up for abuse, however. We have a Necklace and medal for vitality support for Vire’s Might already though.
you mean unlike siegebreaker pallys, warlords, retal oathkeepers and whatever builds that take advantage of smite and smash?
problem with VM mods is they usually aren’t that great, since it’s volcanic stride that does the dmg, and any skill modifier wont apply to volcanic stride, one of the reasons rata acid VM sentinel is so underwhelming since the rata only applies on the initial hit and leaves you with a bit of a “thud” and a cooldown
No, I only suggest VM or Judgment mod on Mneat Shield. And there is already another good vitality shield for melee hitting. I think Shattering Smash mod on Occultant sounds great.
Maw of the Damned could use some help too. Has okay stats on it, decent granted skill, but weird skill bonuses. Could be useful with Blood Knight somehow, I reckon, but other than that I couldn’t figure a build that can utilize this particular shield.
Meat Shield appears to be a pure defensive solution with not going on on offensive side, so not sure about that one.
Occulant having something like that is not a bad idea though. One thing to mention: Shattering Smash is already converted to acid if using RF’s transmuter. It still retains its “physical” VFX, obviously, so making an acid variation would require new art to be made. But I’m all for some S&B action.
Converted Shattering Smash should change reduced physical resistance to acid, vitality, etc. I think the suggested change would give RF/Shield builds a nice boost, especially for vitality in particular.
Meat Shield could use some %damage modifier added to Mogdrogen’s Pact / Word of Renewal to ensure the item is giving boosts to the intended classes. This of course, alongside the suggested skill modifier.
Weird idea I had one night for Maw of the Damned literally last year (November 2020) when I looked at timestamps. Idea back then would be rotating the 4 high weapon damage cd nukes but since Reaping Arc is spammable now, I guess it’s changed to spamming that with 3 nukes as filler.
Acid Shattering Smash would be cool to see for Occulant and probably the most logical idea. The crazy idea I’d envision would be to rework it by adding in flat Acid Retaliation damage and +% Retaliation damage and Retaliation damage added to attack in Nightblade somewhere - maybe on Ring of Steel or Amarasta’s Blade Burst.
It’s always stood out as odd that Merciless Repertoire has +% Retaliation damage but then, there’s no active skill in Nightblade that deals Retaliation damage and your only flat source of it is Blade Barrier which while active blocks you from using any other skills to further take advantage, so unless you make some weird character with tons of passive RATA procs on gear or in devotion, the damage on Blade Barrier isn’t a major help either.
Don’t know what to say on Meat Shield , seems like it’s intended to be a primarily defensive/health item with the only offensive benefits I see being the notably high Shield Vitality damage and +3 to Safeguard (ranks to it outside of Physical gear seem to be pretty scarce last I checked).
Yeah, retal Nightblade as a concept is… weird. I’m guessing they put +% retal damage on Merciless Repertoire in order to give it SOME possibility of being a retal class, but there is literally no support for it other than Blade Barrier and this one niche item: Mythical Crest of Winter Fortitude. Oh and on the Frostdread Cuirass I guess, but only as flat damage, not even any % to retal.
It’s a pity, I once looked into making a cold retal build (fire and lightning retal are things, after all, why not cold?) but yeah. I suppose you could also use the conduit that gives -recharge to Blade Barrier and try to make some wonky build centered around it, but. Eh. I dunno about that.
Anyhow, I do really like the idea of Acid Shattering Smash on Occulant, for sure. I never see that shield being used, and support for retal nightblade would be amazing too. Retal on Ring of Steel makes a lot of sense conceptually (retaliatory blades) and would be SOMETHING to use with blade barrier.
Yup, pretty much what I was thinking looking at that shield (no Blitz though :D). I think +2 to Wendigo Totem can go away, as ranks to that skill are already in abundance on other gear, and be replaced with some Oathkeeper support instead, be it aforementioned vitality SS mod, something AoM related - or hell, even just +1 to OK.
The problem is the RF transmuter for acid builds is it can result in damage loss because it interferes with fire conversion from gear and path of the three. Stacking phys to acid conversion allows you to drop the transmuter and benefit from fire conversion too.
Is the RF transmuter even used for vitality builds?? Frankly I think the transmuter should be altered; it is great for acid levelling as it is now but not so good for endgame.
Yes, it CAN be a damage loss indeed. I brought this up some months ago, when I was attempting to build some acid Paladin meme with Venomlance. The only reason I can think of for the transmuter to be like that is to “nerf” acid RATA RF by making all flat fire retal vitality instead. So, as stupid as it sounds, sometimes you’d be better off without the transmuter. In fact, RF is a weird case not only because of that, but also because Retribution is quite useless for pretty much any non-retal build. I was even deciding if it was worth it to put even 1 point in it (with +5 to OK) on a fire RF build the other day, it’s that bad.
For vitality RF I guess Revenant King is the only answer.
, seems like it’s intended to be a primarily defensive/health item with the only offensive benefits I see being the notably high Shield Vitality damage and +3 to Safeguard (ranks to it outside of Physical gear seem to be pretty scarce last I checked).