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marchionessofmustacheSo, I've been examining a lot of data and stuff while making my unsaga site... and I've been discovering a lot of things that I just never knew about or was misinformed about.
The thing that I was most surprised to learn was the usefulness of shields. The way I understood them (and the way I feel a lot of people understand them) was very wrong. Basically I thought that if you had a weapon panel, weapons blocked as well or better than shields unless you had an equivalent level of shield panel, making shields mostly useless since they come with HP Recovery penalties and you have to release abilities to be able to actually block stuff with them.
But uh. It's not like that at all.
Weapons deflection abilities have a flat base deflection rate. It hovers around a 30% success rate (each weapon is actually a little differnet). It doesn't matter what level of panel you have (or even if you have one at all). It also doesn't matter what material the weapon is made of, just its type. So if you throw a Staff with Block on someone, even if they have no Staff Arts panel, they'll already have a 31% base deflection rate against Slash, Bludgeon, and Pierce attacks.
Shields are VERY different. Shields have different base deflection rates depending on the material they are made out of -- this can be seen in the item's description though. The highest possible value you can get for a shield is 30% on a Damascus shield.
Shields also have to release their abilities before they can block anything. Most shields have Slash Evasion and Pierce Evasion as their 2nd and 3rd abilities. Slash Evasion allows the shield to deflect Slash and Bludgeon attacks, while Pierce Evasion allows deflection of Pierce. So it will be a while before you have the deflection abilities that a weapon does.
And then it seems like it would be pointless to spend all that time building up just a 30% deflection rate and take a Heal-15 penalty when you can get a 31% deflection rate with only releasing Block on a staff, right?
Well, there are THREE big factors here:
1. Shield Arts skill panel GREATLY boosts the shield's deflection rate. It adds (Arts LV * 10 + 20)% to the deflection rate. So a Black Shield, rather than a 30% deflection rate... with a Level 5 Shield Panel... would have a (5 * 10 + 20) + 30 deflection rate.
In other words...
That's super ridiculous! Of course, Shield Arts panels are fairly rare, but it's not that unlikely that you'll get a couple for your characters throughout your adventure. Even just a level 1 panel will already make the base deflection rate of a Black Shield to 60%, which is twice as much as you can get with weapons. All the extra deflection is worth missing out on 15 HP each recovery, especially the higher your HP gets.
And then the other factor:
2. Some shields can guard against MORE than just Slash, Bludgeon, and Pierce. Dragonscale's 4th slot releases "HIL" which allows it to block Hot, Cold, and Shock damage. And it still has Slash Evasion and Pierce Evasion, so that means it can block against every property in the game except Light. And its base deflection rate is 25% which means you can boost that up to 85% with a L5 Shield Panel.
Roadster blocks against Shocking and Queen Shiva blocks against Heat, and both of these release as the 3rd ability, which is pretty great. And the second ability is Physical Evasion which is basically Slash and Pierce Evasion abilities combined into one. So they take the same amount of time to release as a weapon. They also have base 25% rates, too. Kurt could deflect all day against Domliat with Queen Shiva...
(And speaking of added abilities, Silver Circos also has Water Support!)
And there's more!!
3. Deflection doesn't just factor based off your base deflection rate, of course. You roll a check to see if you deflect, but then all monster arts also have 'bypass rates' to see if they bypass your deflection attempt anyway. And they actually have separate bypass rates for weapon deflection and shield deflection each.
And in every single instance, the bypass rate for weapons is higher or the same as the shield rate -- meaning even at the same base rate, shields are more likely to block because monsters are more likely to miss their bypass check against shields. And there are even tons of monster arts where the weapon deflection bypass is HUGE, or even automatic bypass/imposible to deflect with weapons, while the shield deflection bypass is pretty low.
In short, shields are RIDICULOUSLY USEFUL, but they take a long time to draw out their usefulness since you have to release more abilities, need better materials for better shields, and need to get panels for them, while as with weapons you can get a decent block rate right from the start with nothing more than releasing one ability (which is super easy to do).
The thing that I was most surprised to learn was the usefulness of shields. The way I understood them (and the way I feel a lot of people understand them) was very wrong. Basically I thought that if you had a weapon panel, weapons blocked as well or better than shields unless you had an equivalent level of shield panel, making shields mostly useless since they come with HP Recovery penalties and you have to release abilities to be able to actually block stuff with them.
But uh. It's not like that at all.
Weapons deflection abilities have a flat base deflection rate. It hovers around a 30% success rate (each weapon is actually a little differnet). It doesn't matter what level of panel you have (or even if you have one at all). It also doesn't matter what material the weapon is made of, just its type. So if you throw a Staff with Block on someone, even if they have no Staff Arts panel, they'll already have a 31% base deflection rate against Slash, Bludgeon, and Pierce attacks.
Shields are VERY different. Shields have different base deflection rates depending on the material they are made out of -- this can be seen in the item's description though. The highest possible value you can get for a shield is 30% on a Damascus shield.
Shields also have to release their abilities before they can block anything. Most shields have Slash Evasion and Pierce Evasion as their 2nd and 3rd abilities. Slash Evasion allows the shield to deflect Slash and Bludgeon attacks, while Pierce Evasion allows deflection of Pierce. So it will be a while before you have the deflection abilities that a weapon does.
And then it seems like it would be pointless to spend all that time building up just a 30% deflection rate and take a Heal-15 penalty when you can get a 31% deflection rate with only releasing Block on a staff, right?
Well, there are THREE big factors here:
1. Shield Arts skill panel GREATLY boosts the shield's deflection rate. It adds (Arts LV * 10 + 20)% to the deflection rate. So a Black Shield, rather than a 30% deflection rate... with a Level 5 Shield Panel... would have a (5 * 10 + 20) + 30 deflection rate.
In other words...
A 90% DEFLECTION RATE
That's super ridiculous! Of course, Shield Arts panels are fairly rare, but it's not that unlikely that you'll get a couple for your characters throughout your adventure. Even just a level 1 panel will already make the base deflection rate of a Black Shield to 60%, which is twice as much as you can get with weapons. All the extra deflection is worth missing out on 15 HP each recovery, especially the higher your HP gets.
And then the other factor:
2. Some shields can guard against MORE than just Slash, Bludgeon, and Pierce. Dragonscale's 4th slot releases "HIL" which allows it to block Hot, Cold, and Shock damage. And it still has Slash Evasion and Pierce Evasion, so that means it can block against every property in the game except Light. And its base deflection rate is 25% which means you can boost that up to 85% with a L5 Shield Panel.
Roadster blocks against Shocking and Queen Shiva blocks against Heat, and both of these release as the 3rd ability, which is pretty great. And the second ability is Physical Evasion which is basically Slash and Pierce Evasion abilities combined into one. So they take the same amount of time to release as a weapon. They also have base 25% rates, too. Kurt could deflect all day against Domliat with Queen Shiva...
(And speaking of added abilities, Silver Circos also has Water Support!)
And there's more!!
3. Deflection doesn't just factor based off your base deflection rate, of course. You roll a check to see if you deflect, but then all monster arts also have 'bypass rates' to see if they bypass your deflection attempt anyway. And they actually have separate bypass rates for weapon deflection and shield deflection each.
And in every single instance, the bypass rate for weapons is higher or the same as the shield rate -- meaning even at the same base rate, shields are more likely to block because monsters are more likely to miss their bypass check against shields. And there are even tons of monster arts where the weapon deflection bypass is HUGE, or even automatic bypass/imposible to deflect with weapons, while the shield deflection bypass is pretty low.
In short, shields are RIDICULOUSLY USEFUL, but they take a long time to draw out their usefulness since you have to release more abilities, need better materials for better shields, and need to get panels for them, while as with weapons you can get a decent block rate right from the start with nothing more than releasing one ability (which is super easy to do).
no subject
Date: 2018-01-09 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-10 02:47 am (UTC)So far shields have been performing really well, but I realized the information I got was wrong, too. They're not as crazy as 90% deflect rate LOL but they can still get, like, more than twice as good as weapons at deflecting.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-11 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-11 05:34 pm (UTC)