Bit weird?
20 characters.
Right now you either go with a 2H sword for the crit chance or a wand and the super rare focus for the lucky hit/crit chance, shields have their use during early gamplay but then fall off.
Must be the only game where a shield dones’t gives you + armor.
They give you block.
They give you block… but said block just have damage reduction and not mitigating all damage… so yes it’s useless
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Shield would be intended for a thorns build, but those don’t scale into the end-game. It works great until WT3 though. I agree it’s weird they don’t give you armor.
Because game developers hate when players live instead of die.
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Shield is good for overpower builds. The extra +HP bonus is nice, and your damage stat doesn’t really matter.
Overpower builds should either go shield, or 2H for the double aspect bonus for sacrifice.
Thematically it kinda makes sense, it’s like IRL if you have a shield, if you block with it you reduce damage, if you don’t block with it, you don’t reduce anything, so RNG is the nature of the defensive item right there. Meanwhile if you have body armor, there is no blocking, you just get hit and the armor mitigates some of the impact.
With that said, with how OP armor is in this game as a stat, if shields did give armor they would be mandatory on every class that can use one I think, or the armor value would have to be dramatically reduced, so even ignoring the thematics, it kinda makes sense they didn’t go this path and instead gave it a fairly consistent DMG reduction chance instead that’s easier to balance around.
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So is it better to use a 2h or 1h and focus? I just recently went to a 2h but I’m curious if the 1h is better
It completely depends on your build really.
If you wanna play minions without mendeln, probably a 0.9 speed 2H scythe for the hardest base dmg minion hits, minion attack speed seems fixed regardless of weapon speed, but scales off your weapons DMG per hit.
If you wanna play minions with Mendeln lucky hits, prob wand + focus is the best bet for higher lucky hit chance and CDR and faster hits to proc more, since mendeln kinda doesn’t care about minions base attack dmg anymore.
If you wanna play bone spear, you prob want the 2H sword for the crit damage implicit, and so on, each build is kinda different.
I’m bone spear at the moment I really don’t like how bad minions are right now. I’ve been saving gear for when they hopefully fix them but until then I’ll be staying bone spear. I’ll keep an eye out now for better 2H and hopefully get lucky lol
For bone spear probably two hand sword for the crit and the 100% bonus to whatever aspect you put onto it (not sure what the best one would be for that). For some builds the CD of the focus is good, the lucky hit of the wand is good, the life on kill of Scythe is good. I’m using a shield for the block and the extra thorns for my minion builds. IDK if it really helps all that much though.
Shields can roll high health though, which is useful if youre Overpower oriented.
You’d also expect shields to have a higher block chance than 20% though.
Using that logic, why should you benefit from armor on all slots when you are being hit…you should only benefit from the armor piece on the part of the body that you were hit on.
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Block chance should scale with dexterity like dodge does.
Well, no, the only class that can wear a shield currently is the only class without a reliable mobility OR self-heal… But the shield availability does absolutely nothing. It was meant to be the optional security blanket at the cost of damage output, but currently it’s just a damage loss whilst providing nothing at all defensively.
Is shield Necro exclusive? I had no idea because I’m Necro exclusive lol.
Either way, I use a shield right now. It’s not bad, it’s good. You trade 10% DPS in exchange for 12% mitigation when looking at the 80% main DMG boost and the 20% chance to 60% reduce, then you get a new set of mods including implicit and fair enough that the Thorns implicit is meh unless going for a thorns build but the defensive mods are really solid, you can roll CDR, Minion Attack speed, Damage reduce, Damage reduce to close, Max Life etc, really good mods basically, and arguably unless you need crit DMG for your build, the gem is better off as a defensive gem too for 10% more DR while CC’d.
It’s not objectively better than 2h or 1h + focus, but it’s not objectively worse either. It’s a balanced option that truly provides significant defensive upside if that’s what you want. It’s also BiS for a thorns setup like I’m setting up currently, but I know that’s super niche so yeah.
Off-On-topic…Shield armor or no armor - dont care…however why am I left-handed?..or rather why cant I choose if my character i left or right handed…
Yeah - meant to be slightly humorous and retarded remark but still…we should be able to choose. Both right handed and left handed people out there likely would not mind if the choice was there even though its completely cosmetic and not relevant to gameplay in any way.
simple answer is that armor in D4 is so good they dont want players to have other places to get it.
if shields gave armor they would be the only thing you’d use on some builds. especially in HC