The shield's triumphant return to DDO

[esoitl]

I have mentioned this at least once before, S&B characters generally (in the case of Paladin or Fighter builds) rely on their armor and shield to give most of their AC which for some reason is capped at the magical +5 and as such has not really improved since level 8 (they have sidestepped this a number of times with DT armors having higher base armor etc)

Whereas dex based/monk splashes get most of their AC from stats which are blown out of proportion from enhancements, the availability of tomes and exceptional stat bonuses.

My fighter also uses S&B when tanking and sits on about 62ac totally unbuffed, sits at about 70 with barkskin/bard song/haste which isn't too bad, but am still working on it. He is able to swap to TWF when needed as well and does decent DPS.

There is a fine reason for that and it lies in the PHB.
There is also a reason why we will likely not see any +7 or greater stat items, which is also from the PHB.

They have been getting around these but staying somewhat true to the actually D&D rules regarding them. We do have many items that should not be until epic levels but that's a spawn of the suffix/prefix system spitting out something good, maybe even useful if you're lucky.

[Gratch]

I've updated the old favorite DDO1Liner for current DDO:

[Aganazer]

This thread seemed right at home in the "suggestions" forum. I wonder why it was moved. Anyway, I'm still new to DDO and haven't seen higher level shield problems first hand, but it seems like shields should be more useful for elemental resistances. From a low level shields should start dropping with a generic "Lesser Elemental Resistance I" that adds one resistance to all elements. Higher levels would of course see higher resistances on their gear. Let it stack with the other energy resistances.

[Borror0]

I've updated the old favorite DDO1Liner for current DDO:

Awesome!