Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Block on Shields?

I've only had crap shields, but does block ever show up on shields in this game? Since it's an equipment slot that could be taken up with a weapon for dual wielding or switched to a 2 handed weapon, it having only additional physical armour makes it so it's wasted after that bar is depleted, and less useful the longer the fight goes. So do any good shields eventually give block?

I think shields should indeed be reworked.

They should offer:

- much more physical armour than they currently offer (a shield bearer is the typical tank!)
- more and better status effects and bonuses

Introducing a special block system just for shields would imo require two much work and would at least partially be redundant with how physical armour works. But without much better stats shields are indeed kind of pointless, since the take away your second hand and since they also cost 1 additional AP in combat (which is imo spot on if correctly balanced with serious benefits).

In my playthrough of classic mode I came across only 2 shields with block chance. Both of them only had a 1% chance to block.

As they are right now, and assuming they stay more-or-less the same as the game progresses, shields are not worth it. They make your attacks require 2 AP instead of the 1 AP a single-handed weapon would typically require and only give you some extra stats and physical armor. You could get the extra stats dual wielding and also increase your damage for the same amount of AP/attack.

Shields would be worth it if they gave both physical and magical armor and if they gave a good bit more than they currently do.

Shield is indeed quite underpowered. I sort of understand Larian's decision in making block chance super low as an attempt to minimize RNG. However, if they want to keep the increased AP cost, they need to significantly buff the utility of the shield. Although it costs no AP to unequip the shield in the middle of combat in order to minimize AP penalty, I consider that gimmicky and an unintended design flaw. Here are some ideas:

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New Talent: Shield Bash (requires shield, Opportunist)
Replace the attack of opportunity with a shield bash (same damage based on weapon strength). If the target has no physical armor he is knocked down for one turn.

So basically what this does is promoting good positioning of your front line shielded fighter. If he is placed at a good choke point and your enemies are decently whittled down he should become an absolute menace by tying down a significant amount of your foes for free. If he's placed poorly or your enemies haven't received much of a scratch then they can pretty much just run through him fine. This should also be well suited for a PVP scenario because no one loses complete control of their characters and can counter with ease (fortify etc).
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New Talent: Shield Expert
No AP penalty for attacking with a shield equipped.

You trade a talent point to restore your offensive capability. However Larian needs to fix the "take shield off, attack, put it back on" gimmick first.
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New Skill: Raise Your Shield! (requires shield)
School: Warfare
AP cost: 1
Memory slot: 1
Cooldown: 2 turns
Restore the amount of physical/magic armor provided by the shield back to the character (does not go beyond the maximum).

Quick spammable limited armor restoration to give the fighter more CC resistance and staying power.
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I mean.. it's about whether you want to be tankier or spikier. Shields provide more defense. Yes, that defense can get used up, just like your hp, but it is refreshed each time you enter a new battle. Also, shields can have other stat's on them, like bonuses to skills, or attributes, so even once the armor on them gets consumed by blocking damage, they're not completely useless.

Considering the disproportionate decrease in overall offensive capability when you equip the shield (missing a second weapon, having a 1H weapon that costs as much as a 2H weapon to swing, movement penalty etc) compared to the minuscule defensive benefits, it's not just useless. It's actually worse than having no shield at all.

I do think that 2h weapons should cost more to swing than 1h weapons.

They do. If you have just a single 1h weapon equipped (no off hand) then it only costs 1 AP to attack. Equipping a shield makes it take 2 AP to swing your sword.

Ya that seems like the wrong thing to do, to me. It should still only cost 1 AP to swing a 1h weapon even if you're wearing a shield. You're not swinging your shield, after all..

No, that's exactly how it should be. Everything else would severly break the balance.

But then shields wouldn't have a downside, which means they wouldn't have much of an upside to compensate. A chance to block attacks is a great benefit, but 1% on good shields at around level 6 isn't enough since there's no way to increase that through skills so there's no way it ends up being anywhere near enough of a reduction in damage.

I think increasing the chance to block is the easiest way to make shields better, but those talents and skills look cool too. I guess I'm not alone in feeling they're a weak choice, though.

I used to think increasing block % is a good way to solve the issue. Now that I thought about it I am not so sure. Say a really good shield has a 50% chance to block an attack. Well that's a 50% chance for RNGesus to work his miracles and make someone ragequit in Arena because luck ain't on his side. Not to mention Larian now has to do the extra work in determining which skills can be blocked and which can't. Should a shield block Throw Dagger? Probably. What about Mortal Blow? Hmmm.

From the various design decisions we have seen so far I think Larian wants to minimize RNG in DOS 2 combat mechanics. That's why all of my suggestions for the shield talents & skills involve no RNG, either. It does put some significant restrictions on what a shield should do though.

Edit: some new stuff I came up. What can I say, I love the shield and voted for the shield skill tree in both rounds. Too bad most people didn't like the shield as much as say, summoning or polymorph.

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New Skill: Defensive Posture (requires shield)
School: Warfare
AP cost: 1
Memory slot: 1
Cooldown: 2 turns
The character blocks ALL attacks of opportunity with his shield for one turn.

This is a way to make the shield into both a defensive and offensive asset by providing freedom in movement. The shielded fighter can now waltz through a wall of enemies or retreat from !@#$% Bishop Alexander without taking a hit!
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New Skill: Magic Shield (requires shield)
School: Geomancer
AP Cost: 1
Memory Slot: 1
Duration: 3 turns
Cooldown: 4 turns
The character restores the same amount of magic armor as the physical armor provided by his shield. This goes on top of any existing magic armor and can go over the maximum. However it does not stack multiple times. After the spell expires any magic armor in excess of the maximum is destroyed.

Gives cleric/battlemage etc more reasons to wield a shield.
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How about giving Shields a Percent increase to your total armor and magic armor.

Ohh wait... Wizards would be unaffected...

Ehh do it anyway.

Could there not be an item skill, much like Staff of Magus, but for shields? Something along the lines of:

New Skill: Guard
Special

Raise your shield, restoring [shield physical armor, or a modest set amount] physical armor.

Special
- 0 Memory Slot(s)
- Unlimited Uses
Action Point Cost
- 1 Use
Properties
- Requires a Shield
- 2 turn(s) Cooldown

Range: 2.0m

Something like this would not require RNG, would allow shield users to occasionally avoid status effects, and fits within a paradigm already established with certain item types granting "freebie" skills.

I definitely also think it would be cool to have some Warfare skills have a shield requirement, like the shield bash mentioned above.

I like this. Shields should give a real bonus.
Right now we have the same problem as we already had in OS1 ( not EE ) shields are worthless even more now that before. We NEED real and good shield skills.
Maybe the knock down wave ( new skil dont know the name ) should be shield only -> 1Hand+Shield more CC skills while 2handed has more dmg skills.

Yeah I like the guard ability idea. It's more universally accessible compared to my original iteration since it doesn't require a memory slot or training in Warfare. Kinda like how staff always grants the staff magus skill.

I love the ideas here and definitely feel the choice of using a shield should have more impact. In D:OS I only had a shield for the first few levels and then even my tanks went two hand. I also completely agree with removed or very low block chance. RNG / design wise blocking is a pain.

I second (third! fourth?) the guard skill or raise your shield type. I also feel that magical armor should be included in these skills and on shields if they aren't already!
A guard type skill, possible -rare- CC tied to shields in some way and increased armor/magic armor on shields would make them ideal for tank focused characters and would balance the trade offs.

Bump the thread if you read this to push for the elegant solutions provided above!

I love the idea of warfare skills that require a shield, or even just a "staff of magus" equivalent. Removing the current % chance to block is a great idea if replaced with something else.

I don't think a "% soak" has been floated yet. Something like "blocks x% of all physical (and/or magical) damage taken" would make shields useful once the armour bar is depleted.

Get rid of shields and get creative by adding the parrying dagger class. Not a dual wield item you attack with but something you can reduce incoming damage with or counter attack with (maybe require an appropriate talent). Perhaps limit the counter attack to once a round so as not to get the balance all nutty.

I very much like the idea of having no % block and instead having a "shield of the magus" and related warfare/other abilities. The stuff mentioned by Katyr and M3SS3NG3R seem great to me (although I don't find the geomancer magic armor thing to be too interesting)