Shield question....walking through traps?

[wolfy42]

Hi again everyone.

I have another question since coming back. My paladin is playing very nice and has about 50% reduction to physical/magic damage from PRR/MRR...which is pretty awesome already.

He is just using heavy armor and the enhancements from the defensive paladin stance.

I have seen people talk about using a shield to "walk through traps" though. What does the shield do that lets you walk through traps? My saving throws are through the roof, but unlike pretty much EVERY paladin build I have ever made before, I do not have evasion. So far the traps I have been dealing with (only level 8) have not been that hard hitting (even doing everything on elite the first time). That will change though, so I'm curious what bonus you get from using a shield...and is a tower shield a huge improvement (I'm going pure pally but I could take tower shield as a feat......although it's a THF pally...so it seems a bit of a waste to do it unless it's a huge advantage).

Everything does seem much easier playing up this character though. He has more base hp (By far) then I used to have with a toughness feat (saves a feat on him since I won't need toughness). He won't need cleave either it looks like due to getting exalted cleave (at least through heroic content). I took magical training so he has both 80 additional spell points and echoes for continuous healing. PRR/MRR is basically halving all damage he takes after DR/spell resistence is accounted for. He started off with more fortification due to bonus from pally enhancement (running at 83% fort with only medium fort belt).

The only thing he's really missing at all, is evasion. So that really leaves me curious about the shield bonus for traps. Is the bonus just because you get some more MRR/PRR...or is there some other fact I don't know about?

Thanks!!

[Krelar]

Heavy and Tower shields effectively double your PRR/MRR vs effects that allow a reflex save for half damage. (You don't actually have to make the reflex save the effect just has to allow for one)

[Sehenry03]

Well regardless of shield even if you are 2H with good heavy armor and enhancements aimed at raising your PRR/MRR you can walk through 99% of the traps and take minimal damage.

With a shield you take even less but personally I never noticed much of a difference. Either way I took very little damage.

Example in STK the fiery trap of death on the ladder. Before the new armor pass I would take 100+ dmg EVERY hit from flame. After the pass with my PRR/MRR both 100+ and using a 2H weapon I am taking 10 damage or less per hit. HUGE change.

If I have a rogue I let him get the traps. If I don't there is no trap in Heroics that I even slow down for because I know with my high PRR/MRR and good saves it ain't gonna hurt much.

[wolfy42]

Oh, wow!!

Well it's great that heavy shields count as well, I don't need to take tower shields then. And I have plenty of heavy shields I switch to when going through traps. My PRR/MRR isn't over 100 (yet), but I'll be going further into the sacred defender tree eventually which will pump it up a bit more.

Traps where always the main reason I went for evasion builds, so not needing to now (for heroic at least), is a great boon. Especially with such high saves on my pally (already running with +14 to all saves from cha bonus, and that will eventually end up being over +20 to them).

I read that the game was too hard, or made too hard in the forums, but honestly it seems WAY easier now, at least at heroic levels, even on elite. The champions have not even made me heal so far to be honest...and I have a ton of healing compared to the old days.

If traps are not going to be a concern (what about the sonic traps on the bridge in sorrowdusk...can you just walk through that now?).....I'm pretty much GtG for heroic quests non-stop on elite...which is very nice to be honest!! I really don't mind it being easier, especially to solo. The lag was a big problem before and from what I hear it has not improved. Being able to solo quests is often the only way to play!!

[FuzzyDuck81]

Due to the whole diminishing returns thing, the less MRR you have, the more it benefits you to switch to sword & board for traps - if you're normally a 2hander build, just have a single weapon & board set on your hotbar purely for that, it'll make life a lot easier.

[Sehenry03]

I read that the game was too hard, or made too hard in the forums, but honestly it seems WAY easier now, at least at heroic levels, even on elite. The champions have not even made me heal so far to be honest...and I have a ton of healing compared to the old days.

If traps are not going to be a concern (what about the sonic traps on the bridge in sorrowdusk...can you just walk through that now?).....I'm pretty much GtG for heroic quests non-stop on elite...which is very nice to be honest!! I really don't mind it being easier, especially to solo. The lag was a big problem before and from what I hear it has not improved. Being able to solo quests is often the only way to play!!

The first part...hold onto that thought...I love the champions but its to bad that people whine and complain because they want Hello Kitty instead of DnD.

Second part...those are force damage and not sonic. Honestly I don't know how much MRR/PRR helps with those. Your best bet is to simply trip and kill the mob first and avoid them. ****** now when I TR my Pally I'm gonna have to try it and see!!!

[wolfy42]

The first part...hold onto that thought...I love the champions but its to bad that people whine and complain because they want Hello Kitty instead of DnD.

Second part...those are force damage and not sonic. Honestly I don't know how much MRR/PRR helps with those. Your best bet is to simply trip and kill the mob first and avoid them. ****** now when I TR my Pally I'm gonna have to try it and see!!!

Well, I always used to climb up the ladder on the near side, and then jump across, just barely touching down on the other side of the bridge. Make sure you kill the trolls etc on the near side first (cause sometimes they won't run across) so you don't have to head back over the bridge. With evasion of course it was never a problem (most ofmy builds had pally dillitant + evasion and very high saves)...so I could just run through most traps and never be touched.

I just used that as an example because it's the first trap I can think of that required high saves + evasion to make it through (I guess the fire traps/spikes in shan to kor might count as well, but you can actually avoid most of those if you run through it right).

I will already have high MRR/PRR with my two handed weapon setup due to sacred defense tree....so a shield isn't going to be as important, but it doesn't hurt to have a medium shield ready to switch to anyway when I know I'll be running through a trap. That, and the much higher hp max, is going to make many of the really deadly traps ....not so deadly anymore. That is good because when I left some of the traps where pretty insane (hence the evasion + high saves on pretty much all of my chars).

[Sehenry03]

You are exactly right. And what I find amusing are the people screaming for heavy armor to be nerfed because it made evasion much less useful...yet how long did was heavy armor useless and evasion was on most toons =)

Hope they leave it for awhile so I can enjoy actually wearing armor again. Right now I don't need evasion for ANYTHING which is nice.

I have to admit though when my druid who has something like 140PRR and 110MRR just runs through all the traps on EE I wonder what needs to be done. I hope they don't nerf armor which is what I think they will do with all the whiners screaming for ANOTHER nerf (see paladins/barbarians/shirardi/etc) Personally I would rather they make traps MUCH nastier. Or have traps ignore all armor/shields completely. I still don't understand why my paladin doesn't take extra damage when walking in water and hitting a lightning trap lol.

And the only trap in STk that was ever bad was the flame trap with the ladder. It was hard to climb fast enough or time it to avoid those flames and they HURT!

[wolfy42]

You are exactly right. And what I find amusing are the people screaming for heavy armor to be nerfed because it made evasion much less useful...yet how long did was heavy armor useless and evasion was on most toons =)

Hope they leave it for awhile so I can enjoy actually wearing armor again. Right now I don't need evasion for ANYTHING which is nice.

I have to admit though when my druid who has something like 140PRR and 110MRR just runs through all the traps on EE I wonder what needs to be done. I hope they don't nerf armor which is what I think they will do with all the whiners screaming for ANOTHER nerf (see paladins/barbarians/shirardi/etc) Personally I would rather they make traps MUCH nastier. Or have traps ignore all armor/shields completely. I still don't understand why my paladin doesn't take extra damage when walking in water and hitting a lightning trap lol.

And the only trap in STk that was ever bad was the flame trap with the ladder. It was hard to climb fast enough or time it to avoid those flames and they HURT!


Well the flame trap with the ladder could be done by 1 person who knew what they where doing (or had evasion etc), while the others stayed below. The big room of flame traps ended up killing way more people when I would party for the quest (often having just me alive and running back to get their crystals), because everyone has to run through it. This was especially true for the first few years or so (I didn't end up running with parties after that much, just ran through it solo...so not sure if it was still true after say 2010).

Anyway, I agree it's very nice to be able to actually play in heavy armor and not NEED evasion. As a solo player (mainly, I party for the bigger quests etc), I didn't really have a choice before and HAD to take evasion. Even just having an option is really nice. It still has uses (avoiding spell damage all together etc), but at least it's not mandatory anymore. That was why I could never make a pure paladin, never had a pure fighter etc. I pretty much needed rogue,ranger,monk etc levels to function (with the only exceptions being pure spellcasters..where I usually went WF on those so I could self heal (along with tons of hp boosts).

Of course a shield and heavy metal armor drastically reducing the electrical damage you take from a trap doesn't make sense, but I'm not complaining!!

[CThruTheEgo]

Second part...those are force damage and not sonic. Honestly I don't know how much MRR/PRR helps with those.

MRR does not reduce force damage, so no change there. From the wiki page on MRR (http://ddowiki.com/page/Mrr):


It provides a percentage reduction in damage from acid, sonic, fire, electric, cold, alignment, light, positive, negative, poison, and rust.

[Sehenry03]

MRR does not reduce force damage, so no change there. From the wiki page on MRR (http://ddowiki.com/page/Mrr):

Perfect thanx...so force traps are still nasty that's actually good =)

[CeltEireson]

Of course a shield and heavy metal armor drastically reducing the electrical damage you take from a trap doesn't make sense, but I'm not complaining!!

Well, if youre wearing a full set of metal armour including metals boots etc, any electrical discharge youre hit with will go to ground via the armour and not through you, so in theory youd actually take no damage from the lightning - unless of course the charge was big enough to really heat the metal up in which case you'd like end up roasted alive before you could get the armour off ;)

[wolfy42]

Tried using a medium shield btw, and the diff was about 5% less damage from PRR/MRR (but I already have quite high reduction from them).

One thing I did notice though is many of the shields have absorption now (electrical etc) that will reduce damage of that type by an additional %. That might be worth having in alt slots by itself.

That being said, traps that used to one hit characters on elite, now are doing 15 damage a pop...so i just run through them often not even needing to heal up afterwards (As I have 250 hp at this point). I have 5 Loh's (4 base, 1 from guild buff) right now...and rarely have to actual rest on elite runs at level. The PRR/MRR is doing a great job and now that I have upgraded to a battleplate with 2/- DR (+5), I don't even get glancing blows very often.

UMD was only 16 on that armor....race required dwarf (I'm human), but I happened to be boosting my UMD...so could use it just fine.

Most damage I'm taking to be honest is from the freaking HOARDS of champions that are attacking in groups. I'm fine with a few here or there, but whats up with having like 5 of them in a group of 20 monsters that are attacking me!! Havn't died or come close, but it is annoying!!