Blade shield is a popular pvp skill, especially after 2.4. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t think I’ve seen sins using Grief yet. So I figured that it might be interesting to test it out. The other motivation is out of the curiosity of the several “question marks” I pointed out in my guide: (Blade Sin guide for 2.4). To complete the testing of all blade skills, we need to know how blade shield works:
(1) Does +damage from Grief work for blade shield? Does this +damage benefit from off-weapon enhanced damage (OWED)?
(2) We know that blade shield skill damage is not scalable. But does claw mastery ED work on the weapon damage part of blade shield, if using a claw?
(3) Does blade shield skill damage really suffer from the undocumented 0.75 penalty?
(4) Is blade shield skill damage only affected by the skill level when cast?
(5) Is blade shield weapon damage only affected by the weapon/ED/DS on your character when cast?
In order to answer these questions, I tested it out with pvp.
Assumption:
Damage = PvP Penalty x (Blade Shield Skill Dmg x 0.75 + (Weapon Dmg + Grief Dmg) x 0.75 x (1 + OWED + Dex x DexFactor + Str x StrFactor + ClawMasteryED x ClawOrNot))
Setup One:
Plague+Phoenix, 100%DS: observed average damage = 704; calculated average damage=709
Setup Two:
Grief + Phoenix, 70%DS: observed average damage with DS = 1018; calculated = 1030; observed average damage without DS = 499; calculated = 510
Setup Three:
Empty handed + 5 trap GC, 50%DS: observed average damage with DS = 299, calculated = 295; without DS the damage is half
Setup Four:
Cast with Empty handed + 5 trap GC, 50%DS, but pvp without any GCs: damage values are same with Setup Three, meaning that blade shield skill damage is only affected by the skill level when cast.
Setup Five:
Cast with Empty handed + 5 trap GC, 50%DS, but pvp with plague+phoenix. observed average damage with DS = 704. This means that blade shield weapon damage is affected by weapons/ED equipped.
Setup Six:
Cast with plague+phoenix, 100%DS, but pvp with no plague, no phoenix and 0%DS. Average damage = 145. Calculated average damage without DS is 147.
Setup Seven:
On top of setup six, I equipped highlord and gore rider back to have 50% DS. Now I have half of 290 and half of 145.
Conclusions:
(1) Does +damage from Grief work for blade shield? Does this +damage benefit from off-weapon enhanced damage (OWED)?
Yes. Grief works with blade shield and is scaled by OWED.
(2) We know that blade shield skill damage is not scalable. But does claw mastery ED work on the weapon damage part of blade shield, if using a claw?
Yes, claw mastery ED does work with claws on blade shield.
(3) Does blade shield skill damage really suffer from the undocumented 0.75 penalty?
Yes, unfortunately.
(4) Is blade shield skill damage only affected by the skill level when cast?
Yes. This means that we need blade shield prebuff claws…
(5) Is blade shield weapon damage only affected by the weapon/ED/DS on your character when cast?
No. Blade shield weapon damage is affected by weapons/ED/DS at the moment you damage your opponent.
Closing remarks:
To maximize blade shield damage in pvp, Grief is certainly a viable option. The way to do it is to cast blade shield with 2 x 6 blade shield claws. Use whatever weapon of your choice when far away. Switch to Grief when close. However, a GG rare claw with maxed claw mastery and high dex is even better. A GG rare claw looks like this: eth, 450ED, 2 socs, and repair durability. Now how about fool’s mod? That leaves two questions unanswered:
(1) Does claw mastery AR bonus work with blade shield?
(2) Does reduce target defense work with blade shield?
Two interesting notes from previous tests:
(1) Two-handed weapon is not penalized by 3/8 with blade shield. But instead, it’s also 3/4. So if you are using fortitude, two-handed weapon is crazily strong for blade shield.
(2) Claws with +blade shield can proc blade shield when cast (but not with any other kind of weapon). So if you want to surprise your opponent, you can keep procing blade shield when in melee range to damage them. Although, blade shield damage is probably even less than normal attacks.