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member
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member
Joined: Sep 2016
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I can see why they did it because there should be a tactical advantage to use one hand no shield as opposed to one hand with shield. Ehm... why? Defense - 1 with shield. Offense - 2-handed or dual-wield. What possible area does one-handed without shield fit? Not to mention the idea that using a one handed weapon without a shield was a viable martial strategy IRL, as was wearing the shield until it was no longer useful and then dropping it for better mobility and being able to have an open hand - which was one of the most versatile and deadly 'weapons' you could use in close combat. So, I prefer to have - 1) stronger armor/magic armor on shields, and 2) either a talent which makes shield armor regenerate each round OR 3) a suite of skills and a free skill which make using a shield a viable option. Some of the options provided early in this thread would make great skills. So 1 is a must and either 2 or 3, whichever the developers like better.
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Sep 2016
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I'm not a fan of lowering the AP cost for sword and board. The shield is a defense/utility item, therefore, we should increase defense/utility not offense. The previous ideas of armor regen and new skills related to shields are great.
Most enemies do more damage than the shield has armor. In essence, your shield is broken and useless in one hit. More armor, %block, armor regen are needed. Fortify costs 1AP, provides more armor, can be cast on anyone, and can be recast for additional armor later.
Utility would also be a great addition. Warfare has many skills designed for 2h in mind, heavy damage output (rage, whirlwind, cripple.) Skills previously mentioned were great. I would love to see a few skills less related to damage and more to battlefield control (stag, stun, taunt, reflect, bunker.) Additionally, adding skills to protect allies would make shields more useful.
In summary... higher defense, not less AP. More utility and control abilities to make you collect aggro, keep it, and make it difficult for enemies to hurt your allies.
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Dec 2015
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My reason for not suggesting any skills in the form of "Taunt" is because it wrestles character control away from your opponent immediately. If you design it to aggro nearby enemies into attacking the shield bearer for one turn then it's essentially an AOE CC that bypasses the physical/magical armor design. Also the only real counter to it is to kill off the taunter. I feel it's going to be problematic for the AI to deal with and not so fun in the multiplayer arena.
On the other hand, I do think that it's better to balance shield by providing utilities as opposed to simply taking away the AP cost. To highlight the tank archetype, a large amount of skills/talents for shields should center around mentally provoking your opponent into focusing on the shield user. Not by a direct taunt that forces them to attack him, but rather because it is the safest/most reasonable course of action. If your opponent is spending precious resource & AP to deal with your shield, then it's doing the job of a tank already even without taunt.
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Oct 2015
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Can we be realistic though. The Phalanx isn't going to be in the game anymore so we aren't going to have a series of defensive skills just for shields.
It needs to be one skill and one skill only.
This skill needs to offset the bonuses for two handed weapons AND two weapon fighting.
Or we need a passive as powerful as those are offensive.
OR a armor/magicarmor bonus strong enough to offset those.
Last edited by Neonivek; 26/09/16 08:15 PM.
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Dec 2015
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I know Larian isn't going to dedicate a full skill tree just for shields. The list is there to demonstrate various directions you can take with designs without the typical "taunt your enemies" type of shield skill. And if Larian decides to include multiple shield skills, well, I am not complaining.  In any case I'd say raising shield in the same vein as staff of magus is probably the simplest solution for a flavor skill that's useful and relatively easy to balance (and also for AI to take advantage of).
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Oct 2015
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The issue I have is that 1ap cost may actually be... too costly so to speak.
You already do significantly less damage and now your splitting your damage even lower as a result.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2014
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Well, I guess I know what I am going to min-max for my next playthrough; let's try sword and board.
But here's my real question to you guys... how many of you guys have actually tried pushing the sword/board to the limits?
If you have, post your builds, the party set up, and what your game plan was both macro and micro.
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Sep 2016
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Taunt could target magic armor. As a fighter, you want to lock down melee characters who are challenging your allies. It could be a small aoe centered around the player and lasts 1 turn, it could cost 1 or 2AP and have a normal cool down time. It shouldn't be a problem in the arena. It would essential be a CC, but instead of being useless for 1 turn (stun/frozen) the enemy gets to do damage.
However, if I remember correctly, there was an option for a guardian skill tree that wasn't voted for. I agree that creating a handful of new skills for shields is just wishful thinking. There is no doubt that Warfare lends itself better to high damage 2h weapons because skill damage correlates with the weapon equipped. Overpower is the exception (sometimes) because a higher armor value will allow you to break and topple enemies.
Another option could be offering a new weapon style. Have 2h, 1h, dual wield, and add sword/board. Shields would no longer fall under 1h and offer different benefits. Instead of the 1h %accuracy %damage, it could offer %armor %?. Attacks could then cost 1AP but would offer survivability over 1h accuracy/damage.
Personally, I think raising shield (magus idea) and/or boosting armor values would be wonderful. It would have to be a significant boost, considering the offensive focus of this game.
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Sep 2016
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Hey Limz,
Make two fighters. One with a 2h and the other sword and board. Try to keep them balanced in gear. Not sure how you would handle skill point allocation, but I would love to hear feedback on the comparison. Do you plan on min-maxing for survivability? I think I'll try this as well.
I haven't played two fighters in the same group. My experience is from two different games. It just felt like my first fighter (2h) was way more capable than my second (shielded.)
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Dec 2015
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Well, I guess I know what I am going to min-max for my next playthrough; let's try sword and board.
But here's my real question to you guys... how many of you guys have actually tried pushing the sword/board to the limits?
If you have, post your builds, the party set up, and what your game plan was both macro and micro. I can't tell you exactly what's going to make it work because so far I have only learned what doesn't work lol. 1. Cleric with shield is weak. You are AP starved as it is. By throwing away 1 AP here and there casting support spells at the back you will have trouble getting into the fray. 2. Heavy armor + shield means the guy will move slowly. Might want to get multiple movement skills such phoenix dive, battering ram etc to help yourself position. 3. The best shield I found gives me 75 physical armor. In comparison the heaviest armor I found gives me 85 physical armor. The boost is significant and it does have the potential to overtake your health pool so you might want to consider putting more points on physical armor as opposed to vitality. Obviously you are not gonna have much magic armor so the weakness is you will get obliterated by high damage spells and get status effects easily. Also, there is like only one spell to restore physical armor right now (fortify) and it belongs to a rather lackluster school (geomancer). It restores a lot in one go but your sustain compared to a health build with a party full of healers is still weaker and less versatile. 4. The Pawn talent is good -> you don't want to waste any AP moving two steps to whack a target with your short 1H stick. 5. Your DPS sucks real hard compared to say, rogues. So you might want to just manipulate the AI into wasting time on the shield user as opposed to getting out there yourself. By manipulating AI I mean abuse line of sight, smoke, sneak, invisbility etc so they have no one to focus but the shield. Then you can depend on your party to attack from a distance or burst them down with adrenaline fueled backstabbers.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2014
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Hey Limz,
Make two fighters. One with a 2h and the other sword and board. Try to keep them balanced in gear. Not sure how you would handle skill point allocation, but I would love to hear feedback on the comparison. Do you plan on min-maxing for survivability? I think I'll try this as well.
I haven't played two fighters in the same group. My experience is from two different games. It just felt like my first fighter (2h) was way more capable than my second (shielded.) Right now I am using a dwarf and the entire idea is to soak up as much damage as possible while dealing as much CC as possible; it's the next best thing to taunt. Also dwarven racial gives at least an extra CC option. I am turning Red into a 2H, it's suboptimal but whatever, I am more or less seeing if I can get the dwarf 'tank' to disrupt and carry the party. Because the entire goal is to soak in as much damage as possible I am going to be focusing points primarily into magic armor/vitality with a lot of 1 point dips; my usual 1 point dips will be in warfare, scoundrel, necromancy, aerotheurge/hydrosophist, and the rest will be split between one handed and magic armor most likely. So, I'll have on average 6 AP to work with plus pawn or pawn + warlord. My stat allocation is going to be split probably 3:2 str:memory. I may need 2-4 points into wit so I can initiate combat or at least be second in line. I don't think I'll need con but I might and that may take a second play through. So most of your magic/phys armor comes from gear and yo can expect 100+ from frost armor and fortify, so I am aiming for either 250/300 (unbuffed) or 150/600 (buffed). Most likely though I am going to focus on magic armor because again the goal is to do as much damage to myself. Abilities will do more damage than auto attacks, so sacrificing str for memory is perfectly fine, I can probably take up to a 15% loss and still come out on top due to disruption and whatever else. Furthermore, I am speccing necromancy early for Shackles of Pain so I can bombard my main with all the nukes. The game plan is to match opposites; tank + 2H will dive the back line while the casters push out the front.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2014
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Well, I guess I know what I am going to min-max for my next playthrough; let's try sword and board.
But here's my real question to you guys... how many of you guys have actually tried pushing the sword/board to the limits?
If you have, post your builds, the party set up, and what your game plan was both macro and micro. I can't tell you exactly what's going to make it work because so far I have only learned what doesn't work lol. 1. Cleric with shield is weak. You are AP starved as it is. By throwing away 1 AP here and there casting support spells at the back you will have trouble getting into the fray. 2. Heavy armor + shield means the guy will move slowly. Might want to get multiple movement skills such phoenix dive, battering ram etc to help yourself position. 3. The best shield I found gives me 75 physical armor. In comparison the heaviest armor I found gives me 85 physical armor. The boost is significant and it does have the potential to overtake your health pool so you might want to consider putting more points on physical armor as opposed to vitality. Obviously you are not gonna have much magic armor so the weakness is you will get obliterated by high damage spells and get status effects easily. Also, there is like only one spell to restore physical armor right now (fortify) and it belongs to a rather lackluster school (geomancer). It restores a lot in one go but your sustain compared to a health build with a party full of healers is still weaker and less versatile. 4. The Pawn talent is good -> you don't want to waste any AP moving two steps to whack a target with your short 1H stick. 5. Your DPS sucks real hard compared to say, rogues. So you might want to just manipulate the AI into wasting time on the shield user as opposed to getting out there yourself. By manipulating AI I mean abuse line of sight, smoke, sneak, invisbility etc so they have no one to focus but the shield. Then you can depend on your party to attack from a distance or burst them down with adrenaline fueled backstabbers. 1. The solution is to go Elf, but in this play through I am going dwarf for petrify. 2. Blitz, Battering Ram, Adrenaline Rush, Haste, Rage (what dodge?), Favorable Wind (not going to self cast that), Phoenix Dive. 3. I am going to stack magic armor first and foremost because that's what is going to litter the field and is a potential high source of damage. A shield will offer, as you pointed out, anywhere from 75-111 (I think that's level 7-8 though). So head piece, shield, leggings, sabatons will be around 250+. What I really want is 500-600 magic armor and then hoard Frost Armor scrolls and use the spell as well. 4. Yeah the Pawn was my first pick, second will likely be Warlord or All Skilled Up depending on how much I want bartering. 5. Your DPS is going to be pretty shitty for the most part; Rogues can burst up to 2.5k... which almost no one can reach anyways. But if I can do 1k to a single target then that's fine. As I mentioned earlier, my goal is to disrupt the backline with my tank/2H in most situations and let the ranged people deal with the enemy front line. Chances are the enemy front line will turn around and hit the two guys that just dove into the middle of their ranks. Abilities will be far more efficient than auto attacks, so most of my damage is going to come from those.
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