Whatever did happen to shields? I remember in the pre-Monster Power patches, a good sacred shield with mainstat, vit, ARes and crit would fetch MILLIONS on the open market. Everybody needed one - even decked out CMWW wizards would discreetly stash a board in their bags, just in case they ran across something seriously life threatening.
Now? Sword and board is basically a thing of the past, gone the way of the dodo, dial-up internet, and Dennis Rodman. Except probably in high level Hardcore play, there's just no call for using a shield anymore. How did we get to this state of affairs?
MOAR PEW PEW, LESS QQ: The advent of increased drop rates was one of the factors in lowering the popularity of the shield. Back in Ye Olde Daeys of the early Diablo 3 patches, the shield represented the best option for survivability and possibly increased damage output. In those days, dropping a quiver or a mojo that actually had the correct mainstat AND vit was the equivalent of winning 4 numbers at the Powerball, never mind having it drop with crit and a useful skill mod. Furthermore, all such offhand items were class restricted, meaning your fresh 60 witch doctor could drop a Tal Rasha's orb and do nothing but weep or sell it at the AH. On the other hand, EVERYONE can use a shield, and those dropped everywhere, like roaches in an episode of Billy The Exterminator.
Better drop rates put paid to the glory days of the shield. A bottom-of-the-barrel Dead Man's Legacy has MINIMUM guaranteed stats of 170 Dex AND Vit, not to mention the free hate regen, 9 crit minimum and skill mod. At the time of this writing, that particular quiver would cost you, oh, 20k gold. To look anything like that, a shield would probably have to use 3 mods (mainstat, vit, and a mainstat+vit roll) to get there, and roll near perfect +crit. It can get a skill mod, but it's highly unlikely the skill will match the mainstat, and it can't even roll hate regen. And I haven't even started talking about, say, a Thing of the Deep or a Triumvirate, both of which are similar options for their respective classes.
According to D3MaxStats, rare shields can only roll 2 offensive stats - crit chance and bonus damage vs. elites. The rest of its mod table is filled with all sorts of defensive affixes, not to mention clogged up with such great options like Thorns and bonus exp. On the other hand, a random rare source or mojo will come with a damage bonus, which is a huge boost to your dps when paired with a crit mod. It can also roll bonus damage vs. elites, as well as some indirect damage aids like AP on crit and Max AP. A quiver, on the other hand, replaces the bonus damage with IAS, which amounts to the same thing on your sheet. With that in mind, you can begin to see why shields generally languish in the dusty back shelf of the AH.
DIE LESS, NOOB: The other side of the coin that flattened shields is the changed gameplay of Diablo 3. This portion can be summed up in three factors - Monster Power, lower death penalties, and efficiency.
Efficiency is the new buzzword that defines much of the farming attitude in D3 nowadays. Before MP, it was an achievement to just be able to kill an elite in act 2, much less manage to survive a series of them. Nowadays, it's not IF you can kill them, it's how fast you can kill them. Shields have little place in such playstyles, especially in solo games. You've got no business doing the Alkaizer run if you need a shield to just get through the first 5 Neph stacks - better to grab as much dps and movespeed as you can and plow through everything. Monster Power ties into efficiency; if a particular MP setting is too hard to survive without a shield, you're better off just lowering the MP until you can pull it off with a real dps gear set. Despite the increased Exp and loot bonuses of the higher settings, it's generally agreed that faster killing earns better rewards in the long run than stubborn slogging through elites via high defense.
Lowered penalties for dying is the third factor - one of the big reasons for keeping a shield on circa 1.03 and below was that dying was just. A pain. In the neck. One careless mistake with elites could cost you all the gold you've earned on the run, not to mention having to fight the pack again at full hit points, not to mention the longer resurrection durations each time you took a dirt nap. The incentive to just not die was all-consuming. Now, that's all gone, and while that's a good thing in my opinion, it's helped to render the humble shield relegation to the vendor and salvage bin.
So what are shields for nowadays? I've seen and heard of them used mostly on Hardcore, as well as Softcore Uber boss runs. Certainly in party boss runs, there's less incentive for sacrificing everything in exchange for hard dps, and it pays to persuade the barbarian or monk to strap on a shield. Having one party member, preferably a melee (with the inherent 30% melee damage reduction) have better survivability is a good idea against Ubers. This allows the other members to focus on dealing damage, and allows the shield user to serve as a hedge against accidents (read - running into Rakanoth's slice teleport). Basically, the shield using character is more likely to survive, and thus be able to raise any team mates that have fallen during the fight.
Still, this is a rather niche role, and let's face it - most Diablo 3 players couldn't care less about such tactics and just want to faceroll, especially if they're playing barbs to begin with. A possible solution would be to let shields roll another offensive stat at a smaller amount; hopefully this would close the damage gap from something like a 50% dps loss to something like a 15% - 20% loss, making it more attractive to players and promoting better build and gear diversity. Again, who knows - patches can change things drastically, and we may yet see shields come back to the forefront of gearing.
If only non-legendary, non-Ivory Tower shields weren't so aesthetically displeasing, I mean...
...Okay, but yes, I believe the majority of players (not just Diablo, but gaming overall) enjoy a more offensive-oriented style of gameplay. Some people say the best defense is offense, so yes:
That's where shields went. With the nerf in difficulty overall, people simply did not need shields any longer.
I don't think shields should roll an additional offensive stat to make them appealing. Instead, if they could roll up to 8 random properties (or some other higher number) rather than 6 like everything else, the possibility of even more primary stats, vitality, resistance, armor, block %, life %, crit chance, what have you, I believe that will make them at least somewhat more intriguing.
At the end of the day, I just don't want to use a shield at all because they're... quite ugly and don't fit with the wizard image...
They made a design decision to push the game more towards stacking DPS, and shields are not conducive to DPS. It's a pretty predictable outcome. No one wants to trade DPS for Defense because doing that won't let you go up in monster power - face-tanking MP10 doesn't mean anything if your DPS isn't godlike.
Shields could probably use a flat buff so that the amount of defense you gain justifies giving up that ultra-valuable weapon slot. After all if shields gave you a big enough defense boost, you could sacrifice defense stats in other slots and still have good DPS. The other thing they will certainly do is buff Thorns, and that might create a viable tank spec.
So what are shields for nowadays? I've seen and heard of them used mostly on Hardcore...
Where the men are men... and women are men... and children police!
Seriously though; PLAY HC!
I already have a hardcore Witch Doctor. But thank you for that brilliant insight, Captain Obvious.
I don't think shields should roll an additional offensive stat to make them appealing. Instead, if they could roll up to 8random properties (or some other higher number) rather than 6 like everything else, the possibility of even more primary stats, vitality, resistance, armor, block %, life %, crit chance, what have you, I believe that will make them at least somewhat more intriguing.
Although I honestly still think the only solution right now, considering how dps-centric everyone is, is to give shields more dps stats, Jaetch does have a point. By either increasing the number - or quality of stats on a shield - it could make up for the dps loss.
One idea I had was that high level shields could guarantee one of the 'proc' affixes - chance to chill/stun/fear/slow/bleed/summon a headless chicken god. Or even guarantee one of the 'decent' affixes that people like to have at least AND at most one of. This includes bonus health globes, pickup radius, life after kill, quality of life mods like that.
Or conversely, jam pack the shield with lots of large ehp affixes as Zeyk23 just said, in keeping with the shield's defensive nature, and giving players an option to use it for their ehp needs and stack the dps stats elsewhere.
This is one of those issues that seems hard to solve, on the surface, it appears the shield is obsolete for SC play.
However, it really only requires looking toward Diablo 3's predecessor for clues as to how we can make them not only viable, but a good choice over weapons.
Thinking outside the box is necessary here. Adding a wide array of skills as possible rolls on shields could make them compete with dual-weaps.
All of these have offensive buffs. Adding IAS, movement speed, skill bonus buffs and especially multiple sockets (3-4) suddenly makes the prospect of putting down my off-hand weapon and snatching up a shield seem intriguing.
How about we talk gems? Nevermind the obvious (that we need a wider variety of gems/jewels) but look at your gems and what they contribute toward shields. More of the same linear, uninspired madness. Main-stat and Vita, that's it. LAME.
I can get that from my off-hand weapon, nevermind the DPS and IAS garnered from such.
Give gems a shield-specific bonus, something specific and apart from the main-stat bullshit. Give Shields multiple sockets. Give them offensive power to synergize with the shield's inherent protection attributes.
Class specific shields would be the right idea. i.e. Monk shields, Caster shields, Barb shields.
Thank you for starting this conversation, Lazard. This is a VERY important issue within the realm of itemization.
I think that's a gross oversimplification. Itemization is "too easy". As in, it's too easy to make decisions on what items to equip, as they all follow the same line, depending on the slot, main-stat, crit, ias etc etc.
I don't think it matters how hard SC is. It could still be as hard as it was at launch and people would still bullet through as fast as they could, putting emphasis only on DPS. Only, they would die more than they do now.
Shields are boring. Make them not boring, it really is that simple.
Diablo 2 was wildly popular and it certainly wasn't hard. Diablo 3 is VERY HARD when you play HC. Very hard. Death comes easy in that realm.
PvP is where defense SHOULD play a part, but due to a wide range of reasons, PvP hasn't found it's niche as of yet. If PvP had a more intensive following and itemization was more dynamic and inspired, things like defense and shields would enter the fray as important to the player.
If you make shields make more dps than dual wielding, then nobody will dual wield (because shield would provide more dps and more defense)...and people will cry because they "can't" dual wield.
He makes a good point with this. As I already said, the key to making shields more viable (which opens up itemization builds, which also opens up skill builds, and so on) isn't for the shield to outclass dual weaps; it's not even to be on par with dual weaps. As long as the dps loss is small enough (and really, what's the magic number? 5%? 15%?), SOME people might decide that for them, the safety afforded by a shield balances the dps loss.
We're a long way from having any kind of perfect in game balance, but it shouldn't stop us from moving in the right direction. As long as shields get enough dps upgrades - and I harp on this solution again, because in my opinion all the interesting mods in the world won't mean anything to someone who's staring at the red numbers applied to his dps - and as long as at least a significant minority of people begin to use shields again in SC play, I'd think we're moving in the right direction.
Actually, it is not even that simple. The problem is dual wielding. I'm pretty sure if Paladins could dual wield in d2 and it was more efficient, they'd use 2 weapons no matter how good the shield were. In D3 softcore you will also use whatever does the highest dps. Right now it is using two weapons. If you make shields make more dps than dual wielding, then nobody will dual wield (because shield would provide more dps and more defense)...and people will cry because they "can't" dual wield.
Classes in D3 are not "shield classes" lorewise (barb or monk with shield don't make sense from a lore point of view) so forcing them to use a shield (like it was the case for paladins) and forbid dual wielding wouldn't make sense. The problem in my opinion is dual wielding and the lack of a shield only class.
It's a matter of balance. Obviously making shields on-par with dual wielding in terms of DPS would be faulty. A nominal DPS effect is in order, not equal to sporting an EF for example, in that off-hand slot. Remember, weapons will be getting a buff, likely a huge buff. Shields should follow suite as they are woeful in most respects.
What I'm saying is ...find a way to make shields embellish your DPS to a point where people know they're going to lose some DPS over dual wielding, yet, the prospects of innovative procs and survivability lures them to face a hard choice in gears.
I want to point out that a lack of significant death penalty is part of the problem. Having these Elite packs regenerate health if someone dies would be a great incentive not to die.
It's a matter of balance. Obviously making shields on-par with dual wielding in terms of DPS would be faulty. A nominal DPS effect is in order, not equal to sporting an EF for example, in that off-hand slot. Remember, weapons will be getting a buff, likely a huge buff. Shields should follow suite as they are woeful in most respects.
What I'm saying is ...find a way to make shields embellish your DPS to a point where people know they're going to lose some DPS over dual wielding, yet, the prospects of innovative procs and survivability lures them to face a hard choice in gears.
I want to point out that a lack of significant death penalty is part of the problem. Having these Elite packs regenerate health if someone dies would be a great incentive not to die.
The bold part a million times over. There literally is zero incentive not to die in the game. Be it regeneration of monster health or losing 15% of your experience in that level on death (I'm all for deleveling too, but I am sure players would be dissatisfied at at 15% exp loss let alone possibly losing a level). I can't tell you how many streamers I see just going balls to the wall on MP 10, barely paying attention to what they are doing, they die and they either banner to their friends or just run back to where they were like nothing ever happened.
I partially think that it is a fault of the MP system and how it was designed to just scale monster HP/damage - but that discussion is probably for another thread.
I want to point out that a lack of significant death penalty is part of the problem. Having these Elite packs regenerate health if someone dies would be a great incentive not to die.
While this is probably an idea for another thread, I like this concept. Instead of the eventual full regen, how about something like they regen 10% of their max life everytime someone dies? It's not a total screwjob, and is still enough of a pain in the ass to make dying a little more serious.
In the long term, I still believe a sword and board only class is the best option.
With all due respect, there's enough underused skills out there that they can easily shoehorn in shield-centric effects to them. While I don't doubt people would love to see the Paladin make a comeback in the expansion, it's easier to work with what's already there and not being used much.
It's a matter of balance. Obviously making shields on-par with dual wielding in terms of DPS would be faulty. A nominal DPS effect is in order, not equal to sporting an EF for example, in that off-hand slot. Remember, weapons will be getting a buff, likely a huge buff. Shields should follow suite as they are woeful in most respects.
What I'm saying is ...find a way to make shields embellish your DPS to a point where people know they're going to lose some DPS over dual wielding, yet, the prospects of innovative procs and survivability lures them to face a hard choice in gears.
I want to point out that a lack of significant death penalty is part of the problem. Having these Elite packs regenerate health if someone dies would be a great incentive not to die.
The bold part a million times over. There literally is zero incentive not to die in the game. Be it regeneration of monster health or losing 15% of your experience in that level on death (I'm all for deleveling too, but I am sure players would be dissatisfied at at 15% exp loss let alone possibly losing a level). I can't tell you how many streamers I see just going balls to the wall on MP 10, barely paying attention to what they are doing, they die and they either banner to their friends or just run back to where they were like nothing ever happened.
I partially think that it is a fault of the MP system and how it was designed to just scale monster HP/damage - but that discussion is probably for another thread.
omg tralf? you roam the D3 forum? go stream some HoN
Actually, it is not even that simple. The problem is dual wielding. I'm pretty sure if Paladins could dual wield in d2 and it was more efficient, they'd use 2 weapons no matter how good the shield were.
Let's also not forget that D2 shield blocking just completely nullified all damage, not up to some amount that becomes increasingly irrelevant in higher MP, and could easily do so with very good block chances. You got a ton more defense for whatever offense you might be giving up, and not dying was somewhat relevant while running towards 99 at least.
Classes in D3 are not "shield classes" lorewise (barb or monk with shield don't make sense from a lore point of view)
Barbs had three different shield passives at one point in development, I think shield spec is intended to at least be a viable alternative for them, if not the mainstream way to play the class. Early on monks couldn't use shields at all, while other classes have alternative offhands, so the shield was really meant for the barbarian if anyone. Yeah a more dedicated shield class would be nice, but there's nothing wrong lorewise with barbs using them, or having specific skills for them.
Classes in D3 are not "shield classes" lorewise (barb or monk with shield don't make sense from a lore point of view) so forcing them to use a shield (like it was the case for paladins) and forbid dual wielding wouldn't make sense. The problem in my opinion is dual wielding and the lack of a shield only class.
People are talking too lowly of shields. To monks and barbs that don't have a dedicate offhand like a mojo, source or quiver the thought of a shield isn't an impossibility even now. The free 10 crit and ~25% block chance with a sacred shield can really open some new interesting doors for builds, but most of all it would be a financial bargain since you could essentially drop almost all defense from items making them significantly cheaper.
A sacred shield can already roll some overwhelming stats, but to let it be able to roll a decent amount of average damage (~100) and changing the socket to be considered a weapon to enable the crit damage bonus from an emerald would definitely make people rethink their options. There's just something about sword and board barbs that make my fingers tingle, here's to hoping the day will arrive again.
Well said. Shields need a bump but with the impending itemization redux, i'm assuming shields aren't going to be forsaken. It would be a shame to see weapons get crazy buffs and shields be left alone.
Also, to add to add to this conversation, are they going to address the woeful state of 2-hander weaps?
I always thought a great buff add for 2-hander weaps would be adding a nominal block rate, dual sockets and boosting the IAS slightly.
A) Up to 4 sockets
Gems serve a different purpose, similar to how the helm socket works.
I touched on this earlier but your post reinforces this notion. Adding multiple sockets without adding a shield-specific bonus to gems would be errant and dysfunctional.
Classes in D3 are not "shield classes" lorewise (barb or monk with shield don't make sense from a lore point of view) so forcing them to use a shield (like it was the case for paladins) and forbid dual wielding wouldn't make sense. The problem in my opinion is dual wielding and the lack of a shield only class.
Seriously, though, the impending itemization buffs are more of a threat to shields than a promise of hope. Shields are already behind weapons and off hands in every way; improving those items will only make the disparity much larger. What shields need isn't a improvement in affix rolls, but a redesign of the kind and number of rolls they can have.
While I agree that giving shields their own set of gem bonuses could be a quick fix, fiddling with gems is probably out of the scope of the itemization patch; for now, I'd rather talk about what kind of improvements shields could get in terms of raw affixes. On that note though, someone on the blizzard thread did talk about letting gems give shield bonuses such as life steal, health globe chance and life on hit (and maybe changing purple/yellow gems on weapons to aspd and crit chance).
I thought that was a pretty clever idea - most life recovery stats are defensive in nature, but scale to dps in that the more damage you do, or the more often you do it, the more life you get back. It's an affix that ties in to dps without actually increasing dps itself, and potentially throwing things out of whack. It's also acceptably defensive, without losing the flavor of shields as a protective item.
I STILL think shields should roll some damage mods, just to lessen the dps gap between them and offhands, but new gem modifiers would be an interesting solution too.
Shields became obsolete after the first itemization patch (I think 1.0.3). In which items began rolling more all resist as it was pretty clear the only roadblock in inferno was obtaining 1k all resist. While providing significant defense a shield also was an extra slot with all resist. I remember people paid 75m for Stormshields.
Now there is literally no reason to use a shield. I've only seen a shield equipped in two situations. 1.) A hardcore character. 2.) A super geared softcore character with so much DPS and uses a shield either for a.) the lols or b.) for extra defense.
There is so many things blizzard can do to bring the shield back and many have been mentioned in this thread so I won't restate them. However simply making the game harder probably won't work. In the minds of gamers in 2013, DPS > Defense. With gold being as accessible as it is people will be able to out dps any defense road block. So they need to do other things besides "make the game harder". Skills/Passives requiring a shield would be a good start.
Shields might make a return for some with new multiplayer buffs. Glass cannon ranged classes could play a higher monster power if they have a tanky shield barb or monk holding most of the monsters back for them. The constant dps bursts from casters would greatly out weigh the small dps loss from the offhand of the tank. If you're running, you're not attacking.
Of course this would be pointless for top tier geared players and some builds like cm. But archon will be making a huge return with the buffs to the timer, so i would rather be melting shit rather than running from it. And what ever happened to having fun? who cares if the build isn't optimal.......
Also it's only softcore that has this problem. look at the hardcore auction house.... 7 pages of innas temperence last time i looked. only a handful of cc mempos. not even a page worth. not even a 5cc to be found. Not much goes to waste in hardcore. Much more rewarding as far as gameplay goes imo. especially if you bump it up to mp 2 - 3 and do selffound.
What realy helped shields in D2 were shield specific skills like shield slam and that rush that paladins used to oneshot everything in PvP. Those skills were only usable with a shield so people used more shields.
Apart from that though, shields were just stat sticks. You didnt atack with them or anything. But they were crazy good stat sticks, that's why people used them. If the shields in D3 would have anything near the stats of the D2 shields, people would certainly use them.
The following was reposted from my blog.
archmagelezard.blogspot.com/2013/03/state-of-play-whatever-happened-to.html
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Whatever did happen to shields? I remember in the pre-Monster Power patches, a good sacred shield with mainstat, vit, ARes and crit would fetch MILLIONS on the open market. Everybody needed one - even decked out CMWW wizards would discreetly stash a board in their bags, just in case they ran across something seriously life threatening.
Now? Sword and board is basically a thing of the past, gone the way of the dodo, dial-up internet, and Dennis Rodman. Except probably in high level Hardcore play, there's just no call for using a shield anymore. How did we get to this state of affairs?
MOAR PEW PEW, LESS QQ: The advent of increased drop rates was one of the factors in lowering the popularity of the shield. Back in Ye Olde Daeys of the early Diablo 3 patches, the shield represented the best option for survivability and possibly increased damage output. In those days, dropping a quiver or a mojo that actually had the correct mainstat AND vit was the equivalent of winning 4 numbers at the Powerball, never mind having it drop with crit and a useful skill mod. Furthermore, all such offhand items were class restricted, meaning your fresh 60 witch doctor could drop a Tal Rasha's orb and do nothing but weep or sell it at the AH. On the other hand, EVERYONE can use a shield, and those dropped everywhere, like roaches in an episode of Billy The Exterminator.
Better drop rates put paid to the glory days of the shield. A bottom-of-the-barrel Dead Man's Legacy has MINIMUM guaranteed stats of 170 Dex AND Vit, not to mention the free hate regen, 9 crit minimum and skill mod. At the time of this writing, that particular quiver would cost you, oh, 20k gold. To look anything like that, a shield would probably have to use 3 mods (mainstat, vit, and a mainstat+vit roll) to get there, and roll near perfect +crit. It can get a skill mod, but it's highly unlikely the skill will match the mainstat, and it can't even roll hate regen. And I haven't even started talking about, say, a Thing of the Deep or a Triumvirate, both of which are similar options for their respective classes.
According to D3MaxStats, rare shields can only roll 2 offensive stats - crit chance and bonus damage vs. elites. The rest of its mod table is filled with all sorts of defensive affixes, not to mention clogged up with such great options like Thorns and bonus exp. On the other hand, a random rare source or mojo will come with a damage bonus, which is a huge boost to your dps when paired with a crit mod. It can also roll bonus damage vs. elites, as well as some indirect damage aids like AP on crit and Max AP. A quiver, on the other hand, replaces the bonus damage with IAS, which amounts to the same thing on your sheet. With that in mind, you can begin to see why shields generally languish in the dusty back shelf of the AH.
DIE LESS, NOOB: The other side of the coin that flattened shields is the changed gameplay of Diablo 3. This portion can be summed up in three factors - Monster Power, lower death penalties, and efficiency.
Efficiency is the new buzzword that defines much of the farming attitude in D3 nowadays. Before MP, it was an achievement to just be able to kill an elite in act 2, much less manage to survive a series of them. Nowadays, it's not IF you can kill them, it's how fast you can kill them. Shields have little place in such playstyles, especially in solo games. You've got no business doing the Alkaizer run if you need a shield to just get through the first 5 Neph stacks - better to grab as much dps and movespeed as you can and plow through everything. Monster Power ties into efficiency; if a particular MP setting is too hard to survive without a shield, you're better off just lowering the MP until you can pull it off with a real dps gear set. Despite the increased Exp and loot bonuses of the higher settings, it's generally agreed that faster killing earns better rewards in the long run than stubborn slogging through elites via high defense.
Lowered penalties for dying is the third factor - one of the big reasons for keeping a shield on circa 1.03 and below was that dying was just. A pain. In the neck. One careless mistake with elites could cost you all the gold you've earned on the run, not to mention having to fight the pack again at full hit points, not to mention the longer resurrection durations each time you took a dirt nap. The incentive to just not die was all-consuming. Now, that's all gone, and while that's a good thing in my opinion, it's helped to render the humble shield relegation to the vendor and salvage bin.
So what are shields for nowadays? I've seen and heard of them used mostly on Hardcore, as well as Softcore Uber boss runs. Certainly in party boss runs, there's less incentive for sacrificing everything in exchange for hard dps, and it pays to persuade the barbarian or monk to strap on a shield. Having one party member, preferably a melee (with the inherent 30% melee damage reduction) have better survivability is a good idea against Ubers. This allows the other members to focus on dealing damage, and allows the shield user to serve as a hedge against accidents (read - running into Rakanoth's slice teleport). Basically, the shield using character is more likely to survive, and thus be able to raise any team mates that have fallen during the fight.
Still, this is a rather niche role, and let's face it - most Diablo 3 players couldn't care less about such tactics and just want to faceroll, especially if they're playing barbs to begin with. A possible solution would be to let shields roll another offensive stat at a smaller amount; hopefully this would close the damage gap from something like a 50% dps loss to something like a 15% - 20% loss, making it more attractive to players and promoting better build and gear diversity. Again, who knows - patches can change things drastically, and we may yet see shields come back to the forefront of gearing.
...Okay, but yes, I believe the majority of players (not just Diablo, but gaming overall) enjoy a more offensive-oriented style of gameplay. Some people say the best defense is offense, so yes:
That's where shields went. With the nerf in difficulty overall, people simply did not need shields any longer.
I don't think shields should roll an additional offensive stat to make them appealing. Instead, if they could roll up to 8 random properties (or some other higher number) rather than 6 like everything else, the possibility of even more primary stats, vitality, resistance, armor, block %, life %, crit chance, what have you, I believe that will make them at least somewhat more intriguing.
At the end of the day, I just don't want to use a shield at all because they're... quite ugly and don't fit with the wizard image...
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Shields could probably use a flat buff so that the amount of defense you gain justifies giving up that ultra-valuable weapon slot. After all if shields gave you a big enough defense boost, you could sacrifice defense stats in other slots and still have good DPS. The other thing they will certainly do is buff Thorns, and that might create a viable tank spec.
I already have a hardcore Witch Doctor. But thank you for that brilliant insight, Captain Obvious.
Although I honestly still think the only solution right now, considering how dps-centric everyone is, is to give shields more dps stats, Jaetch does have a point. By either increasing the number - or quality of stats on a shield - it could make up for the dps loss.
One idea I had was that high level shields could guarantee one of the 'proc' affixes - chance to chill/stun/fear/slow/bleed/summon a headless chicken god. Or even guarantee one of the 'decent' affixes that people like to have at least AND at most one of. This includes bonus health globes, pickup radius, life after kill, quality of life mods like that.
Or conversely, jam pack the shield with lots of large ehp affixes as Zeyk23 just said, in keeping with the shield's defensive nature, and giving players an option to use it for their ehp needs and stack the dps stats elsewhere.
However, it really only requires looking toward Diablo 3's predecessor for clues as to how we can make them not only viable, but a good choice over weapons.
Thinking outside the box is necessary here. Adding a wide array of skills as possible rolls on shields could make them compete with dual-weaps.
All of these have offensive buffs. Adding IAS, movement speed, skill bonus buffs and especially multiple sockets (3-4) suddenly makes the prospect of putting down my off-hand weapon and snatching up a shield seem intriguing.
How about we talk gems? Nevermind the obvious (that we need a wider variety of gems/jewels) but look at your gems and what they contribute toward shields. More of the same linear, uninspired madness. Main-stat and Vita, that's it. LAME.
I can get that from my off-hand weapon, nevermind the DPS and IAS garnered from such.
Give gems a shield-specific bonus, something specific and apart from the main-stat bullshit. Give Shields multiple sockets. Give them offensive power to synergize with the shield's inherent protection attributes.
Class specific shields would be the right idea. i.e. Monk shields, Caster shields, Barb shields.
Thank you for starting this conversation, Lazard. This is a VERY important issue within the realm of itemization.
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I think that's a gross oversimplification. Itemization is "too easy". As in, it's too easy to make decisions on what items to equip, as they all follow the same line, depending on the slot, main-stat, crit, ias etc etc.
I don't think it matters how hard SC is. It could still be as hard as it was at launch and people would still bullet through as fast as they could, putting emphasis only on DPS. Only, they would die more than they do now.
Shields are boring. Make them not boring, it really is that simple.
Diablo 2 was wildly popular and it certainly wasn't hard. Diablo 3 is VERY HARD when you play HC. Very hard. Death comes easy in that realm.
PvP is where defense SHOULD play a part, but due to a wide range of reasons, PvP hasn't found it's niche as of yet. If PvP had a more intensive following and itemization was more dynamic and inspired, things like defense and shields would enter the fray as important to the player.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
He makes a good point with this. As I already said, the key to making shields more viable (which opens up itemization builds, which also opens up skill builds, and so on) isn't for the shield to outclass dual weaps; it's not even to be on par with dual weaps. As long as the dps loss is small enough (and really, what's the magic number? 5%? 15%?), SOME people might decide that for them, the safety afforded by a shield balances the dps loss.
Wyatt Cheng made a good statement in his recent reddit post about skill balancing, that it doesn't have to be for everybody, but it should be for somebody.
We're a long way from having any kind of perfect in game balance, but it shouldn't stop us from moving in the right direction. As long as shields get enough dps upgrades - and I harp on this solution again, because in my opinion all the interesting mods in the world won't mean anything to someone who's staring at the red numbers applied to his dps - and as long as at least a significant minority of people begin to use shields again in SC play, I'd think we're moving in the right direction.
It's a matter of balance. Obviously making shields on-par with dual wielding in terms of DPS would be faulty. A nominal DPS effect is in order, not equal to sporting an EF for example, in that off-hand slot. Remember, weapons will be getting a buff, likely a huge buff. Shields should follow suite as they are woeful in most respects.
What I'm saying is ...find a way to make shields embellish your DPS to a point where people know they're going to lose some DPS over dual wielding, yet, the prospects of innovative procs and survivability lures them to face a hard choice in gears.
I want to point out that a lack of significant death penalty is part of the problem. Having these Elite packs regenerate health if someone dies would be a great incentive not to die.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
The bold part a million times over. There literally is zero incentive not to die in the game. Be it regeneration of monster health or losing 15% of your experience in that level on death (I'm all for deleveling too, but I am sure players would be dissatisfied at at 15% exp loss let alone possibly losing a level). I can't tell you how many streamers I see just going balls to the wall on MP 10, barely paying attention to what they are doing, they die and they either banner to their friends or just run back to where they were like nothing ever happened.
I partially think that it is a fault of the MP system and how it was designed to just scale monster HP/damage - but that discussion is probably for another thread.
While this is probably an idea for another thread, I like this concept. Instead of the eventual full regen, how about something like they regen 10% of their max life everytime someone dies? It's not a total screwjob, and is still enough of a pain in the ass to make dying a little more serious.
With all due respect, there's enough underused skills out there that they can easily shoehorn in shield-centric effects to them. While I don't doubt people would love to see the Paladin make a comeback in the expansion, it's easier to work with what's already there and not being used much.
omg tralf? you roam the D3 forum? go stream some HoN
Let's also not forget that D2 shield blocking just completely nullified all damage, not up to some amount that becomes increasingly irrelevant in higher MP, and could easily do so with very good block chances. You got a ton more defense for whatever offense you might be giving up, and not dying was somewhat relevant while running towards 99 at least.
Barbs had three different shield passives at one point in development, I think shield spec is intended to at least be a viable alternative for them, if not the mainstream way to play the class. Early on monks couldn't use shields at all, while other classes have alternative offhands, so the shield was really meant for the barbarian if anyone. Yeah a more dedicated shield class would be nice, but there's nothing wrong lorewise with barbs using them, or having specific skills for them.
Talic uses a shield. Pretty sure that blows the lore argument out the window.
A) Up to 4 sockets
Gems serve a different purpose, similar to how the helm socket works.
Well said. Shields need a bump but with the impending itemization redux, i'm assuming shields aren't going to be forsaken. It would be a shame to see weapons get crazy buffs and shields be left alone.
Also, to add to add to this conversation, are they going to address the woeful state of 2-hander weaps?
I always thought a great buff add for 2-hander weaps would be adding a nominal block rate, dual sockets and boosting the IAS slightly.
I touched on this earlier but your post reinforces this notion. Adding multiple sockets without adding a shield-specific bonus to gems would be errant and dysfunctional.
lol.....Lezard diggin up lore in this muthafucka.......love it.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
While I agree that giving shields their own set of gem bonuses could be a quick fix, fiddling with gems is probably out of the scope of the itemization patch; for now, I'd rather talk about what kind of improvements shields could get in terms of raw affixes. On that note though, someone on the blizzard thread did talk about letting gems give shield bonuses such as life steal, health globe chance and life on hit (and maybe changing purple/yellow gems on weapons to aspd and crit chance).
I thought that was a pretty clever idea - most life recovery stats are defensive in nature, but scale to dps in that the more damage you do, or the more often you do it, the more life you get back. It's an affix that ties in to dps without actually increasing dps itself, and potentially throwing things out of whack. It's also acceptably defensive, without losing the flavor of shields as a protective item.
I STILL think shields should roll some damage mods, just to lessen the dps gap between them and offhands, but new gem modifiers would be an interesting solution too.
Now there is literally no reason to use a shield. I've only seen a shield equipped in two situations. 1.) A hardcore character. 2.) A super geared softcore character with so much DPS and uses a shield either for a.) the lols or b.) for extra defense.
There is so many things blizzard can do to bring the shield back and many have been mentioned in this thread so I won't restate them. However simply making the game harder probably won't work. In the minds of gamers in 2013, DPS > Defense. With gold being as accessible as it is people will be able to out dps any defense road block. So they need to do other things besides "make the game harder". Skills/Passives requiring a shield would be a good start.
Of course this would be pointless for top tier geared players and some builds like cm. But archon will be making a huge return with the buffs to the timer, so i would rather be melting shit rather than running from it. And what ever happened to having fun? who cares if the build isn't optimal.......
Also it's only softcore that has this problem. look at the hardcore auction house.... 7 pages of innas temperence last time i looked. only a handful of cc mempos. not even a page worth. not even a 5cc to be found. Not much goes to waste in hardcore. Much more rewarding as far as gameplay goes imo. especially if you bump it up to mp 2 - 3 and do selffound.
Apart from that though, shields were just stat sticks. You didnt atack with them or anything. But they were crazy good stat sticks, that's why people used them. If the shields in D3 would have anything near the stats of the D2 shields, people would certainly use them.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841