Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Shields and shield skills.

I generally play as a "tank" type character that uses one handed weapons and shields. At a certain point I realized that using a shield in the first game really wasn't worth it. Especially because casters were so powerful, the extra armour/block wasn't balanced well enough in my opinion. The lack of shield specific skills was also quite disappointing, so I have a few ideas for the shield user in D:OS2.

1) During the twitch stream, they talked about the cover system. An ability to take cover behind a character with a shield would be really neat. So casters/archers would not have line of sight on the character behind the shield user. This could be an ability as simple as warrior targeting the skill on the adjacent party member that forces the next hit to be taken him/herself.

2) A "Hold the line" type skill. You activate the skill and select a line or area along the ground. When an enemy walks inside that line, your character will move and intercept the character and either interrupt the movement action (not refunding unused action points), or force a melee attack at reduced damage to waste their action points.

3) Crowd control skills. I believe that shield using characters should not do as much damage as a person dual wielding or using a large two-handed weapon, so in addition to the best defense and physical protection skills, perhaps add a bit of extra CC into the mix. Shield specific knock-downs, stuns, etc.

4) Magic interaction: casters in your group can temporarily charge your shield with elemental magic. It will become empowered with whatever element you cast on it. Electricity? Melee attackers will be stunned. Fire? Burned. Ice? Extra defense, but slowed due to more weight.

Enemies would also be able to cancel out or interact with the skills by casting spells on you. Opposite elements to cancel effects, or interactive elements to cause problems for you (such as casting an oil spell on a fire-shield user will cause that user to explode, or making it rain when your shield is electrified will stun you).

Thanks for making the best cooperative game my wife and I have ever played. We are looking forward to experiencing it again with the enhanced edition, and again with D:OS2 -- especially as a couple of dwarves!

Or maybe a talent, like Opportunist, where your character will try to block opponents that try to get past them, if they are close enough.

The Tank able to double as cover is a cool implementation. I've seen some games having similar feature whereby as long as you're staying at a set distance behind the tank you won't take damage unless its circular AoE(so cone/line AoE, projectiles, melee are all blocked) and also the shield has a fixed maximum blockable dmg. So you either flank, use the proper AoE, special CC or overpower the shield's defenses.

Another skill i'd love Shield bearers to have is a sort of party absorption ability. 50% of the damage taken by allies within 10m of the tank will be transferred to him, the tank will mitigate 50% of that dmg otherwise he'll die too fast. Something of that caliber. The skill has to be "maintained", the tank can freely move and attack however hard CC will "turn off" the skill.

Other abilities may include laying down a 10m diameter protection rune which mitigates 20% dmg for any allies standing on the rune. So knocking/pushing the character out of the rune is crucial.

The game doesn't have solid taunt/aggro system which makes sword and board tanks useless, providing party utility skills is the go to in my opinion. Quite a number of games are ditching the aggro system and replacing it with mitigation & utility system which i feel is a reasonable move. Tanks are still relevant that way.

Although shields were hardly useless in the first game, where you could get, what, 50-75% block chance, ridiculous amounts of armor, health and resist, so you were basically unkillable, I'll agree there was a huge lack of "tank skills." Not sure if Larian is going to do much with shield specialists, since I seriously doubt the tanking skill tree will win in the ability votes, but here are my thoughts anyway.

First, I'd either tone down the total block chance you can get, or make it only reduce damage, not negate it completely. It'd be easier to balance and create less scenarios where your tank complete negates three attacks in a row so you basically win. In turn, more abilities like the ones suggested above would make tanking more dynamic.

Three different tanking stances would help you chance your focus on the fly. Numbers could totally change, but things like:

Self-Preserving: 15% higher chance to block attacks against yourself, but -20% movement speed.

Self-Sacrificing: 15% lower chance to block attacks against yourself, but you can block attacks against allies within 3m of yourself.

Retaliatory Defender: 50% of the damage you block is dealt to the attacker.

So you could specialize for self-defense, ally defense, or damage, depending on what's needed at the moment.

I like the idea of casting elements on shields, tanks giving cover, maybe adding shield CC attacks (CC is already super common), and more shield specific abilities in general.

The game DOES have a kind of aggro system, hence the Stench talent, but it's behind the scenes and hard to know what affects the AI's decision making. Mostly AI just attacks whoever's closest, but if they're made smarter, tanks might need a way to attract attention to themselves, unless they gain lots of abilities to negate damage to allies.

On a slightly unrelated note, I hope there's some reason to use a single melee weapon without a shield. Pillars of Eternity gave you an accuracy bonus for using only a single weapon one-handed weapon with no shield or offhand weapon, which I thought was a good way to give its niche as the "accurate stance."

I played D:OS only once (and didn't finish it) with Scarlet being a sort of paladin with water magic and men-at-arms. Sword and Board. I thought she was pretty useless if enemies weren't wailing on her. So, yeah, shield skills, please. The mobs did have an "aggro table" but was so behind-the-scenes that it was difficult to manipulate it in some way.

I completely agree. More choice for the player is always a plus.