Shields need to be able to stagger and interrupt armored targets like stormvermin and chaos warrios better in order to be viable on legend. If you cannot do damage then at least make them decent crowd control weapons.
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I may be wrong but I believe one of the traits allows you to increase your push strength versus attacking-targets, I do not know if that makes them viable against maulers/chaos warriors however - but it’s worth testing.
I find the shield quite worthwhile against stormvermin currently, although I find all of them severely lacking in damage - which would be more fine with me if they hit more targets, but since you’re using a 1h I sort of expect to be able to at least remotely deal with single targets… Pair this with the fact that you lose a lot of sight range with your shield out, especially on bardin, and I tend to rather use a 2h instead.
But you can already stagger anything except a CW in an overhead?
But any weapon can have that trait. In VT1, shields are still considered pretty bad and they get that level of knockback by default, despite there being way fewer and easier enemies, so I think it would be prudent to bring VT2 shields to that level at minimum.
As i played the Dwarf last you could interrupt CWs, if right timed, with the push but you can actually interrupt CWs&Co with every Weapon ,except Rapier and 1h Swords (Falchion Works), if you hit the Head with a charged Attack.
Not saying I disagree, but figured it was worth mentioning as it might alleviate some of that pressure for the meantime - I won’t argue that it’d help sell the weapon as something more than a block-horde-and-stand-still weapon
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I think the stagger (on push and bash) of shields is at the moment quite good already. What they do need (aside from A&S) is better armor handling. I also wouldn’t say no to a better defense against a few attacks, namely those that normally can damage you through block, just to counteract the reduced mobility (and thus, chance to dodge those attacks).
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Also the mighty knockback something trait from V1 is really needed.
I was just on my way here to post about shields being meh and needing some help! So yeah, I totally agree. I love the concept of shield+ weapon and I also love the general feel of combat with them, going toe to toe with a huge mixed group and being able to not die feels really great. But then, something inevitably happens to make it feel just terrible. I think it boils down to two main problems:
- Terrible armor pen, except axe+shield for dwarf. Mace, Hammer, Sword are all just terrible at it. Sword does some but in practice even a lone Stormvermin takes an eternity to kill, much less a CW or a group of armored things…
- Terrible mobility, which means you get wrecked by disablers all the time. If you’re doing your shield-bearing CC job then good luck dodging an assassin/pack rat/leech/etc.
I’m okay with shields having low AP and low mobility. They’re CC and survivability weapons, not DPS. But I think their CC and Survivability both need a buff to make them worth taking.
FIRST: Buff CC. More powerful stagger off the bat that can interrupt even CW/Mauler overheads. Maybe make it so that a fully charged shield bash can interrupt them. Then in the event of SURPRISE CW PATROL having the ranged DPS hide behind a shield-bearer who holds off the enemies would actually be a viable tactic and really encourage good teamplay. Taking trait for more powerful pushes should allow a fully charged shield bash to stagger a miniboss. I really don’t think this would be OP in the slightest, because catching up to a mini-boss while carrying a shielded weapon is hard enough, much less landing a fully charged shield bash - it would pretty much only have utility in freeing grabbed / pinned down teammates. (Probably need some timing testing, I’m thinking that requiring the shield bash to be “fully charged” would mean the miniboss could recover before charging up another so you wouldn’t be able to just stun-lock him).
SECOND: Buff survivability. There’s a few ways this could be done, but my favorite is: When blocking, the shield should be able to block packmaster and gutter runner attacks from the front. Give it a smaller radius so that the attack has to be coming directly from the front, hit the shield, etc. I think leech going through it is fine cuz he’s sucking out your soul with magic, that doesn’t sound like something that would care about armor. The way it is now, it sucks to be holding your own against a huge horde mixed with elites, blocking gunner bullets with your shield, absorbing the aggro so your team can recover, and then a little dinky packmaster hook just snags you right up. Letting shields block this from the front only would give them that survivabilty edge without making them too powerful, because you’d still need your team to actually kill the thing(s).
Basically, I’d like to see buffs and focus on the role shield+weapon should fill, rather than say buffing their AP to make them “viable”. I like having weapons that have a very specific role, they just need to be able to do it well enough to justify the roles they can’t do that are left for someone else. Shield+ job is CC and survivability, and they just can’t do either one reliably enough to be worth it on Legend.
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i miss spamming v1 shield charged aoe bash with killing blow … with axe to chop armor Q_Q
Opportunist trait does not actually significantly increase the shield’s push power. Seems like overkill overall.
I agree with the OP. Shields are terrible mobility and thus there needs to be a very good incentive for using them. They stagger SV and maulers fine but maybe they could be made to stagger CW a little better. Same with plague monks.
What makes shields so bad is they thought it was worth adding a bunch of useless extra attacks to the charge so you can’t just shield bash. Then they also made the actual charge shield bash slower.
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Yeah definitely not disagreeing - and alright, figured it was worth a pitch to try. Can’t say I use shields nor opportunist sadly since I find dodging preferable and shields cumbersome but I do hope they sort you guys out with somethin or make a statement about where they feel shields should be at and if they’re satisfied with where they’re at
I know what you mean. I have this cycle of trying to play shields again, then giving up and going back to my 1-handed mace that has 8.5 FREAKING STAMINA SHIELDS, way more mobility, way more armor pen, and still top-tier crowd control.
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Another problem is that you lose all stamina when receiving heavy attacks even while using a shield (afaik), making extra stamina shields a lot less useful.
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Your idea is quite right, but unfortunately on Champ and Legend there is simply so much armor walking around that every character needs a reliable way to deal with it. On both shield users, Handgun could help with this but its ammo capacity (and reload speed) is too low to use it consistently against Elites. Either shotgun could also work, but that does nothing to CWs, and is less effective against normal armor too. CWs are also troublesome with any other ranged weapon capable of dealing with Stormvermin (and as a frontliner, you need to be able to deal with them with at least some effectiveness).
With Shields and otherwise, I think the devs overvalued Stamina on characters somewhat. The lv5 Talents that give it feel mostly a bit underwhelming (except in the beginning when you haven’t grasped dodging that well yet), and the weapon Property is best used with pushing weapons, not for blocking. Having one or two extra Stamina and a wide defense arc is not quite enough help to offset weak mobility and dodging, especially as all bosses have strikes that damage you even through block, and several Elites too have hits that immediately break your block no matter how much Stamina you have. With shields’ short dodges it’s extremely hard to react fast enough to get out of the way of these attacks, and possibly cannot be done with the dodge movement alone.
I’m not sure allowing blocking disablers would be a good idea, though. They can still be avoided even with shield’s dodge (even if the window is smaller), and they can be attacked or pushed at the same time too. Tying it to Parry timing (there seems to be extra effect with that even without the Trait; in my experience there’s a half second window or so for it) might work, though, allowing panic-blocking but not constant protection from everything.
For crowd control and staggering, Shields are still a very strong option. In addition to them, there are only two or three melee weapons I (or my friend, I just talked with him about this) can stagger several Stormvermin at once: Flail with its heavy attacks (but that needs them to be very close to each other), Sienna’s Dagger second heavy (but that’s a minor staggering), and maybe Flame Sword’s first heavy. They also have the strongest pushes already, and even with the disappointment on removing bash-spam, the shield bash is a good attack. Hard to use well with Hammer/Mace, but still. But getting better tools for damaging or crowd control beyond just pushing or bashing wouldn’t go unappreciated on me either.
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I like your ideas for shields and I think those are the most likely to make it into the game.
I would love for shields to get a full rework, giving them more armor penetrating attacks and even use the shield offensively in their light combo for lots of stagger. I think your suggestion is more likely.
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