Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Suggestion: Make shields great again!

As the title says. As it is, there isn't much sense in using shields since they don't give that much of a bonus to armor to remain relevant, and they don't give that much stat bonuses anyway. Magic shield increase? Kinda neat, but still, a 2h hand wielder or wizard with staff can chew right through the magic armor bonus a shield can give.

Even with the nerfhammer having already hit the warfare skills somehow, shields are still quite underpowered, and a 1h + shield warrior against a 2h warrior is still gonna get his ass handed to him.

So, what could we do?

I would suggest the following:

1) Slightly modify warfare so that it increases the chances of a shield parry against ranged attacks, therefore negating the attack. Nothing too great, but neither too shabby, either. Of course, archers could still position themselves at the warrior's back or right side to bypass the shield parry.
2) Add maybe a couple of warfare skills to be used in conjunction with the shield (but nothing overpowered!), like the good old shield bash/shield slam and something like, I don't know, "Turtling", which would be the opposite of rage: increase the warrior's resistances at the expense of hit and critical chance. Maybe a 1-turn immunity to knockdown too.

Any comments?

This was a problem in the original D:OS as well - 1-handers were always overshadowed by their more powerful 2-hander counterparts. I think an option could be to create (good) defensive skills that require a shield equipped. For example, "Shield Wall" - gives you a 50% increase to physical armor. Or perhaps add an ability related to Shields; like "Shield Mastery", with something like a 10% --> 15% --> 20% etc. scaling of increase to physical defense provided by shields.

Could also add in the all-important Shield Bash option, allowing you to either displace or stun an enemy.

That's what I meant. Glad to see I'm not the only one seeing a trend detrimental to shields here

I'm seeing the shield pointlessness thing too, and would like to see it fixed: there's some nice shields available, but little inclination to use them since one-handers are a bit weedy. It was much the same in ED, sword-and-shield was the classic combination but two-handers were much more deadly, and two one-handers just as good and had additional bonuses. So I never used shields.

Shields are definitely kind of meh. And is it just me, or does every shield only provide 11 magic armor? Seems bugged to me. If it gave equal magic and physical armor, the armor would feel a lot more significant. As is, my breastplate of the same level blocks more than my shield.

I like the idea of having a shield means you gain some bonus against frontal attacks (some form of blocking could return. Shield skills would be great too. Giving a bonus to battering ram or other certain skills would be nice. They need to be more than just stat sticks, as they basically were in D:OS 1.

I am glad they've mostly ditched the 100% damage reduction blocking from shields, though I did see a shield that provided 1% chance to completely block damage. Not sure how high that percentage will reach in later game, but probably should stay below 25%, maybe even 15%, top. Shields in D:OS EE actually were pretty ridiculous with how basically immune to physical damage you became (plus tons of elemental resists meant you were nearly unkillable.)

IMO shields should be divided between physical and magical, with the ability to block both only appearing as an enchantment.

From there, much like staves, they should offer a skill that allows the user to restore their armor of the relevant kind(magic for magic shields, physical for physical shields).
Basically, instead of using AP for depleting the armor of an enemy, a shield user can use AP to increase their own.

That's also a good alternative. Keep it up fellas, I'm reading lots of good ideas here. Let's just hope the guys at Larian will at least consider some of them :P