Improving Sword-And-Board

[PsychoBlonde]

Here it is:

Get rid of active shield bashing altogether and make the 3 shield feats (Shield Mastery, Improved Shield Mastery, and Improved Shield Bash which should be renamed to Greater Shield Mastery) proc offhand attacks like TWF does. So, you'd start out with 20% to proc shield attacks and go up to a total of 80% with all 3 feats.

Of course, now you can say, "but PB, won't that mean that sword-and-board has NO offensive reduction compared to TWF?"

That depends on a few factors. One, the crit profile on shields is pathetic. Granted, the Madstone Aegis does have a x3 crit. But it only crits on a 20 and the Improved Critical feat does not apply to shields. Secondly, I've been unable to discover what kind of damage bonus you get from stats to a shield. Strength bonus? Half strength bonus? (IIRC technically it should be 1/2 strength because it's an offhand attack). There are no enhancements or other abilities that let you use stats other than strength, though. How about power attack? Does it work with shields?

So you're still looking at some potential decreased damage output from using a shield instead of an offhand weapon. I'd love to be able to say for sure, but I haven't been able to find exactly how any of this stuff works--it's a severely neglected area of the game for the most part.

But, let's use this as the basic scenario: shield gets 1/2 str to damage, no improved critical, no possibility of alternate stats. So you're still talking lower DPS than a TWF character, just not AS low as it is currently.

If that's JUST TOO MUCH, how about this--keep the shield feats as they are, adding doublestrike and giving you a max 20% proc with the shield. Then change the TWF feats so that they are +20% proc with offhand weapon and
+10% proc with offhand shield/orb. Now you get 8% doublestrike with your main hand and up to 50% offhand procs--but it takes SIX FEATS to accomplish this. Oh, and a base 17 dex. To me, that seems a little harsh.

[fmalfeas]

Actually, there's another option that has nothing to do with DPS. But it does have to do with the fact that one of the reasons you'll never see many S&B chars is because the shields uncenter you, so your PJ build fails.

So, have shields raise your dodge and dodge cap. Have tower shields /all/ give you at least 10/slashing, bludgeoning DR (from the front and side only if that's too powerful for your taste) since the main reason to have a shield that big is to stop arrows from getting to you.

Why the dodge thing? It's an abstraction of actively deflecting blows with the shield, rather than absorbing them with a solid block (which would be shield blocking/AC bonus), and it uses an already implemented system so turbine doesn't have to do any epic codework raiding.

That would help to address one of the reasons building S&B isn't really worth it most of the time. The most common one may be 'poor DPS' but the next most common one is 'it's pointless, because the AC isn't going to be high enough to matter anyway'.

You can further buff the playstyle of the primary S&B classes by implementing a feat. I'll call it 'Advanced Armor Training'. You take it for a given class of armor, and it either raises the dodge cap in that armor, or outright eliminates it. I think it's a fair idea, since PJs get to have equivalent AC, and decent PRR without burning a feat, let the plate/medium wearers get some dodge at the /cost/ of a feat. It's not like it'll make the the FOTM, since you still can't use Evasion or Improved Evasion in medium or heavy armor. It'll just make it more viable in today's game to wear heavy armor.

If you really worry about it unbalancing heroic levels, make it a ML21 Epic Feat that requires Heavy/Medium armor prof, and at least 6 or 12 levels of a class that gets that prof as part of it's starting package. Kinda like Improved Sneak Attack.

Really, is someone going to complain if their Player Cleric is less likely by a few percent to be splatted by a sudden EE Troll triple-tap?

[Enoach]

As a person that uses S&B for one of my characters (Paladin L20) I would love to see Improved Shield Bash actually improved...

Possible additional bonuses
1. Slam -> Minimum 5 Feet to Max 10 Feet run that slams into mob, knockback/stun - Save takes Size into consideration
2. Each attack with the shield from the 20% has a chance to knockback/stun/trip an opponent or even cause an Unbalance effect giving them a save debuff to trip and Reflex effects

Now I cannot confirm the Improved Critical working or not on shields. I use Talon during the lower mid levels which is considered a Slashing Weapon, however I have not tracked how many times it crits. Nor have I tracked how many crits I get while shield blocking. So this is something I will have to look into. I seem to recall that it was working, but have nothing to confirm it.

[Turtlsdown]

Actually, there's another option that has nothing to do with DPS. But it does have to do with the fact that one of the reasons you'll never see many S&B chars is because the shields uncenter you, so your PJ build fails.

So, have shields raise your dodge and dodge cap. Have tower shields /all/ give you at least 10/slashing, bludgeoning DR (from the front and side only if that's too powerful for your taste) since the main reason to have a shield that big is to stop arrows from getting to you.

Why the dodge thing? It's an abstraction of actively deflecting blows with the shield, rather than absorbing them with a solid block (which would be shield blocking/AC bonus), and it uses an already implemented system so turbine doesn't have to do any epic codework raiding.

That would help to address one of the reasons building S&B isn't really worth it most of the time. The most common one may be 'poor DPS' but the next most common one is 'it's pointless, because the AC isn't going to be high enough to matter anyway'.

You can further buff the playstyle of the primary S&B classes by implementing a feat. I'll call it 'Advanced Armor Training'. You take it for a given class of armor, and it either raises the dodge cap in that armor, or outright eliminates it. I think it's a fair idea, since PJs get to have equivalent AC, and decent PRR without burning a feat, let the plate/medium wearers get some dodge at the /cost/ of a feat. It's not like it'll make the the FOTM, since you still can't use Evasion or Improved Evasion in medium or heavy armor. It'll just make it more viable in today's game to wear heavy armor.

If you really worry about it unbalancing heroic levels, make it a ML21 Epic Feat that requires Heavy/Medium armor prof, and at least 6 or 12 levels of a class that gets that prof as part of it's starting package. Kinda like Improved Sneak Attack.

Really, is someone going to complain if their Player Cleric is less likely by a few percent to be splatted by a sudden EE Troll triple-tap?

Would this be considered a thread hijack?

[PsychoBlonde]

Actually, there's another option that has nothing to do with DPS. But it does have to do with the fact that one of the reasons you'll never see many S&B chars is because the shields uncenter you, so your PJ build fails.

I've made just as many armored characters as pajamas characters, and this has absolutely no bearing on the fact that I universally prefer either TWF or THF for my armored characters. The problem is simply how godawful the dps is on sword-and-board.

I don't recommend making the shield VITAL for defense because I think survivability shouldn't be directly opposed to effectiveness. Orbs don't come with a huge -spellpower penalty for casters (just the opposite, in fact), so why do shields come with such a massive -damage penalty for melee? Silliness.

[Knightsubzero]

There should be a shield charge with a Knockdown attached.

Select target, hit charge, balance check knocks down opponent.

[redspecter23]

I like the ideas in the OP, but I'd take it a step further. Make the base shield bash 20% similar to your base offhand attack chance with 2 weapons. Replace shield mastery, improved shield mastery and improved shield bash to a chain of feats which add +10% mainhand doublestrike and +10% shield bash and 5 PRR per rank for a total of 30% doublestrike, 30% shield bash and 15 PRR (the chain currently gives 8% doublestrike, 20% shield bash and a max of 15 PRR)

As mentioned, shield bash is fairly weak from a dps standpoint unless you have very specific shields built for it. Even then, without improved critical applying, it hardly feels worth it. However, there are certain abilities which do apply to the shield such as holy and pure good in the sentinel tree. Adding more imbues similar to this could help out shield bash in indirect ways as well.

[unbongwah]

Get rid of active shield bashing altogether and make the 3 shield feats (Shield Mastery, Improved Shield Mastery, and Improved Shield Bash which should be renamed to Greater Shield Mastery) proc offhand attacks like TWF does. So, you'd start out with 20% to proc shield attacks and go up to a total of 80% with all 3 feats.
Shield bashing bonuses appear to be stacking finally; so Imp Shield Bash + Shield Striking + Shield Bashing property gets you 55% bash chance.

Secondly, I've been unable to discover what kind of damage bonus you get from stats to a shield. Strength bonus? Half strength bonus?
It appears to be getting full STR bonus.

Part of the problem is doublestrikes & shield bashes don't seem to proc on cleave atks, which give 2H builds a big advantage over S&B (and TWF). It would also help if there were better d.axes and b.swords than just Nightmare and maybe EE First Blood; something with the crit profile of eSOS or Balizarde, for a start. But the main problem is the survivability benefits of S&B are too weak while the DPS loss is too great. I'd like to see a big boost to PRR and probably saves for S&B builds and changing Shield Deflection from on-block to automatic chance to ignore elemental dmg. Also the tank-y action boosts like Last Stand need to last longer, at least a min. like Power Surge; as-is they're simply too short to do much good.

[Irenae]

No thanks, just add more doublestrike and PRR to shield mastery and improved shield mastery would fix it.