Would you like Energy Shields in D4?

General Discussion
1

For those that don’t know what Energy Shield is: Energy Shield is an additional layer of “health” that absorbs damage and quickly replenishes after you have not taken damage for a few seconds.

In fantasy RPG’s Energy Shield is generally associated with Magic Users, although other classes can get access to that as well, but not to the degre that Magic Users can.

There are various ways of how ES can work: either it is restored instantly after you have not taken damage after x seconds or after you have not taken damage for x seconds it starts to replenishes over y seconds back to maximum.

° For example, you have 2000 Health and 1000 Energy Shield.
° Before your life gets drained, the damage gets absorbed from the 1000 ES you have.
° Now you take 1300 Damage, which means that your ES is down and you are now left with 700 Life.
° After e.g. 3 seconds your Energy Shield could start to replanish over 2 seconds back to 1000 ES.

Additional ES could be gained through items, but eventually the Sorcerers could get additional ES for each Level Up, but therefore get less health than other classes per level up., and maybe even get more ES by putting points into a Defensive Attribute that would give her Health/damage reduction and ES (while other classes like Barbarian would not get ES, but more life/damage reduction instead) and even though passive skills, which also can speed up the ES regeneration rate.

In PoE and Wolcen items do not just give an innate bonus to armor, but light armor gives +x ES, leather armor gives dodge chance/+x evasion and only heavy armor gives +x armor (and in Wolcen you also can get +x to All Resistances). And of course all of them can also roll as ordinary affixes.

Would you like something like that in D4?

6 Likes
2

Back? It never left. The wizard has access to that as a passive option. Great with the bracers that give it a boost.

3 Likes
3

They are already in D3, so why not in D4. Legendary gem: Molten Wildebeest’s Gizzard, after not taking damage for 4 seconds, gain an absorb shield for 200% of your total Life per Second. :shield: :shield:

4

I wouldn’t want it as a very common stat like it is in Path of Exile, but as a rare thing more like it is in Diablo 3 I think it works fine.

1 Like
5

In the OP’s defense; Diablo 3 didn’t have those at launch. Galvanizing Ward for example, didn’t give a shielding effect back then and instead gave some life regeneration.

That said regarding energy shields; I would have to say it depends on some factors such as:

  • How many classes/builds can use it?
  • is it a good alternative to resistance and/or armor?

In all honesty though; I would like to see the return of a mana shield (or Diablo 2 energy shield skill) ability.

3 Likes
6

I know, but what I meant is ES being much more common, like as a general affix roll on items, as well as ES being the innate defensive bonus on light armor/caster armor (as opposed to just “armor” in D3 being the default defense bonus on all armor pieces) and the Sorceress even getting ES per level up and by putting points into a defensive attribute that gives her life + ES.

And even some enemies could have ES in D4.

ES in D3 is actually quite rare.

7

Well, I definitely would like to see more done with armor usage, yes they’re old tropes but D3 armor was a little too generic for me.
Magic users wear light armors/cloth use magic shield for protection. Strength types use heavy armor. Dexterity types use medium armor and acrobatics (don’t make the mistake about ground effects here either).
Yep, old tropes but tried and true.

3 Likes
8

That is how PoE is doing it and that is indeed much better.

Evasion/dodge needs to have its numbers turned a bit higher than Armor or All Resistances. Like if let’s say 2000 Armor or 2000 All Res gives you 40% Damage Reduction, but 2000 Evasion gives 60% Dodge Chance.

I know, the problem with Dodge was that it was too unreliable, so maybe DEX classes like a Ranger or an Assassin could have an innate bonus that converts 30-50% of their Dodge Rating into damage reduction. Or at least as a Passive Skill that transforms a certain amount of dodge into something else like armor or all res or DR.

Yes, totally!

3 Likes
9

Not really. I would be in favor of the sorcerer having one as a buff or even baseline passive. But maybe as a pylon type buff, or item specific bonus.

10

if we had like…attributes…you could easily implement it

4 Likes
11

For intelligence users like Wizard. Sure… Reason being. IF you don’t - explain to me how they are different from EVERY other class in the game? Barbarian life = Wizard life at that point… EACH class in a game should have something different about them or what happens is you have 5 different names for the same class… This is also why i didn’t agree with them changing “agility” to give “armor” instead of “Dodge” effect. . . so now a monk with max ‘agility’ is no different than a barbarian with max ‘strength’… it’d be dumbing down the game…

2 Likes
12

the problem isn’t that dodge is unreliable, its that they capped it to low to be equals… “before” i could make a monk with what would add up to 100% dodge but they capped it. Just like i can make a Crusader with 100% block, but they capped it. The effect isn’t the bad part, the bad part is this company doesn’t want it to work…

13

My thought was that every class in the game could have individual, different attributes.

Like lets say every class has one offensive attribute, one defensive attribute, one resource attribute and one utility attribute.

In terms of D3 that would be:

Offensive Attributes
Barbarian: Strength
Crusader: Valor
Demon Hunter: Precision
Monk: Dexterity
Necromancer: Wisdom
Wizard: Intelligence

Defensive Attribute
Barbarian: Constitution
Crusader: Fortitude
Demon Hunter: Survivability
Monk: Vitality
Necromancer: Blood
Wizard: Magical Armor

All Offensive Attributes are similar, but also different, same for the Defensive Attributes.

Eg. the Barbarian’s Strength gives
° x% increased damage
° x% increased weapon damage
° pierce though x% of enemies armor
° x% crushing blow

While the Wizards Intelligence gives:
° x% increased damage
° x% increased innate spell damage
° pierce through x% of enemies resistances
° x% increased area of effect

Demon Hunter’s Precision gives:
° x% increased damage
° x% increased critical hit chance
° x% increased attack speed
° x% chance that a missiles pierces through enemies

===================================

For Defensive Attributes:

Barbarian’s Constitution
° x% reduced damage taken
° x% increased maximum life
° x% reduced melee damage taken
° x% reduced physical damage taken

Crusaders Fortitude
° x% reduced damage taken
° x% increased armor
° x% increased block chance
° x% reduced damage taken from blocked attacks

Demon Hunter’s Survivability
° x% reduced damage taken
° increases all resistances by x%
° x% increased maximum life
° increases all sources of healing by x%

Monks Vitality
° x% reduced damage taken
° x% increased maximum life
° x% dodge chance
° x% parry chance (parry is like dodging a melee attack)

Wizards Magical Armor gives
° x% reduced damage taken
° x% increased maximum energy shield
° x% increased energy shield recharge rate
° energy shield starts to regenerate x% sooner

Would something like this be different enough for you?

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Also Armor, Resistances, Dodge and Energy Shield could work differently from each other.

Dodge and ES are kinda obvious, but what about Armor and Resistances?
Just to throw a few ideas in here:

Maybe Armor can reduce all incoming damage by a certain amount and also give a bonus to either flat physical damage reduction (physical absorb) or reduce incoming physical damage by a percentage based on your armor value.

Maybe Resistances can always let ~30% of the incoming damage though without effecting it, while the remaining 70% get reduced by a percentage based on your resistance value.

E.g. you have 2000 fire resistance, which translates into e.g. 50% reduced fire damage taken. You then take 1000 fire damage, 300 goes through without being effected by fire resistance, and the remaining 700 get reduced by 50%. So in the end you take 650 fire damage (300 + 350).

Something like that gives each of these defensive mechanics its own individual characteristics.

Dodge is not capped, it is just multiplicative (almost like diminishing returns) and therefore can not reach 100%.

If you could have 100% dodge and it even would work against ground effects, it would be massively OP and unreasonable. It has to be multiplicative / have diminishing returns.

A 75% dodge chance is a 200% increase in Effective Health, just like 75% damage reduction via armor or all res is a 200% increase in Effective Health as well.

However, armor and all res are more consistent, since you will have a streak of bad luck with your dodge sooner or later and you will die, even if you make Dodge 50% more effective than armor or all res (like 10% reduced damage taken via armor/all res = 15% dodge chance).

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The main defensive mechanism should be x% damage reduction, while things like armor, dodge, block, energy shield, all resistances are secondary or even tertiary.

If I had to choose between 50% damage reduction via armor or all res on the one side, and 65% or 75% dodge chance, I would take the armor/all res option.

However, if I could choose between 50% damage reduction and a 10% increase in armor or all res on the other side, and 50% damage reduction and 15% dodge chance, than the option with the dodge chance seems a lot more appealing.

I hope that made sense.

2 Likes
14

Naaaah, that’s too much coding for nothing
2 mainstat for each character? Didn’t learn from history?

15

Sure, but definitely NOT how PoE implemented it.

I prefer it like a magic armor than extra life pool. Otherwise it’s a balancing nightmare like PoE, where they buff/ nerf ES every few leagues .

Having ES like magic armor makes balancing easier as it uses same formula. I.e a body armor of 500ES will be equaliance to 500armor.

The problem with PoE is that ES take same stat slot as armor but act Ike extra life pool. Armor only reduce physical damage and a numeral value instead orb %DR. ES reduce damage from all source except chaos damage which pass through ES. To add to the issue, you can get much higher ES than life simple because +life are affixes while ES are affixes as well as base stats of armor. To “compensate” you get more life nodes in passive tree. It’s a big S mess, complexity for seek of complexity.

16

Yep how it’s been done in RPG’s both pen and paper and computer for about almost 40 years, I’d say.

17

It should be only for Wizard/Sorceress and similar to D2: Not an ES perse, just drains the mana/energy that is used to cast skills.

1 Like
18

There can be both, Energy Shield as well as Mana Shield in the game.

It is not really mainstat. It works differently.

Think about an affix called ‘Offensive Ability’ and an affix called ‘Defensive Ability’

  • ‘Offensive Ability’ turns into Strength for Barbarians when the y equip it, but it turns to Precision for DH’s, into Intelligence for Wizards, into Valor for Crusaders, etc

  • ‘Defensive Ability’ turns into Constitution for Barbarians, into Magic Armor for Wizards, into Fortitude for Crusaders, into Survivability for DH’s, etc

What is the difference?

You mean that your idea of ‘Magic Armor’ absorbs only elemental and arcane damage, but nor physical damage, instead of being an Energy Shield that replenishes itself?

I think that armor could and should reduce all damage, just like in D3, but in addition it also could give either flat/numerical physical damage reduction or % physical damage reduction on top of that.

Yeah, I think it would be better if only e.g. ~15% of chaos damage would pierce through ES.

2 Likes
19

My idea is magic armor , energy shield or whatever fancy name given should work just like armor, do %DR for all sources ala Armor in D3.

Its not interesting or complex for sure, but its easier to balance. WHen you have different defensive mech with different formulas, & variable to buff them (items, stats, passive tree, active skill, talent etc) it will be hard to balance.
Think of it like a chemical or math equation where you need to balance the left & right.

The ideal design (IMO) is for people to deicide Energy shield or armor, or a combination, with some tradeoff depends on playstyle & skill choice etc, while not needing Matlab or Ansys or some engineering maths software to optimised.

20

Just too bad, that a Monk cant use this Bracers, even though we have shilds too …

just to show, how outbalanced it is :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: