Shield Wall

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Toroic
Posts: 18
Character: Elric Faust

Shield Wall

Post by Toroic » March 17th, 2019, 1:54 am

I had some extra infusion lying around so I decided to test the much-maligned shield wall skill, and I can say it absolutely lives up to it's reputation as the worst parry skill (which is an impressive feat considering shield check exists which also is rightly criticized but that's a whole other post).

Fair warning now, this is long and full of numbers.

For those of you unfamiliar, this is how shield wall operates.

Animus cost: 21

Effects:
-10 stamina on activation

-cannot dodge
-25% defense rate
+25% parry rate
impassible by players
lose 10-15 stamina per parry
stops working if you move (or if your stamina gets low)

I'm going to give a breakdown of this skill from both a pve and a pvp perspective and why it is ill-suited for both. Diverse builds will be discussed (and why none of them will have any use for shield wall)

I've had plenty of time to theorycraft this, so let's start.

Why shield wall has no place in pve (or pvm, if you prefer)

This is where we would expect an ability with the name shield wall to shine, as enemies frequently come to you, often in a choke point. Unfortunately, nothing shield wall provides helps in any pve situation you'd find yourself in.

The stamina cost is reasonable to activate, and that's the highest praise shield wall will get from me as we continue. Preventing dodge makes shield wall automatically a bad trade for any finesse users automatically, which is under many circumstances a reasonable trade off vs heavy armor as the stamina and dexterity tax is quite heavy. As shield wall requires a shield, it's also not going to have many weapon skills available concurrently or be usable with two handed weapons. As a parry mage will likely want finesse for the mana regen, this means before we've even gotten to the second effect we've disqualified it for anything other than a heavy armor build with a shield.

Next we trade 25% defense for 25% parry. Assuming both stats have the same value, this is generally a poor trade as an enemy missing doesn't cost you any durability on your equipment. In theory this could have some synergy with confidence (as you heal health and stamina on parry) and with the passive shield check component of advanced parrying I, but as confidence gives 1-24 stamina and shield wall gives -10 to -15 stamina with maxed parry you could lose 14 stamina or gain 14 stamina per parry.

If you're under attack by several enemies the rng will eventually cause you to stop parrying as a few bad rolls drop your (already diminished by 18 due to heavy armor) stamina pool. Shield check for free even with 125 strength is too unreliable to invest any additional resources into trying to make happen more often, as it has a 15 second cooldown and only 25% chance of happening when you parry.

The next calculations assume 120 parry and 80 to 100 strength, which is pretty standard from what I've seen on the server.

As far as trading defense for parry, if you are at a 100% chance of getting hit this is an excellent trade for the approximately 3 seconds before you run out of stamina using shield wall as you're mitigating 60% of attacks directed at you instead of 35%. You probably could've used that stamina better but in the immediate short term you're mitigating more damage. At a 25% chance of enemy missing you it's close to a wash as they'd miss 25% and you'd parry 35% without having to invest any stamina at all. At 50/50 chance of being hit you start making a bad trade where you'd be better off not using shield wall at all, and if they have the minimum chance of hitting you (2%) you're improving their chance of landing a hit by about 700%. Some of you might find this analysis exhausting, but I think it helps illustrate why even when we don't consider the stamina cost of shield wall it still isn't useful in many situations.

Enemies already can't pass through players, so this aspect of the ability is useless in pve. Mobility in most fights is not a major downside to give up, though obviously shield wall is useless if you need to be mobile.

Next we come to the stamina cost. Most warriors in heavy armor (remember, we excluded shield wall from being useful on everyone else) have about 50-70 stamina after equipping their armor. For most things this is quite sufficient and relatively easy to manage with confidence and regen from dexterity/dexterity pots. You can use confidence or evasion with shield wall but the only purpose of using evasion and shield wall together would be if you were having a contest to drop your stamina pool as quickly as possible. Confidence will on average break even until it wears off and your stamina drops within 4-5 parries, or roughly 8 incoming attacks. Under average conditions this may extend the usable lifespan of shield wall to about 10 seconds in those few situations where it offers any mechanical benefit.

Against fast attacking enemies or hordes (not accounting for multiple engagement as those numbers are highly variable but quickly outperform the parry bonus of shield wall anyway) you're always losing out using shield wall because you're throwing away a cooldown and it won't be up for a meaningful amount of time anyway.

Why shield wall has no place in pvp either

The immediate appeal most people see with shield wall is that it creates an impassible spot for other players. So vs other players you could block a doorway, or coordinate with others to block off a bridge. Several issues with this appear instantly. Firstly, you need to be in one of those situations where a player cannot simply go around you. Secondly, they need to not be able to teleport over you. Thirdly, because you need a shield your only ranged option is throwing and that would be at a penalty of some form. Fourth, if they have any wrestling skill at all they should be able to rip through your stamina in moments and get free.

It's possible in some niche situations that this makes ganking some other players possible when it wasn't before. In general this is either going to require multiple people (in which case there are many more ways to accomplish this more effectively) or they probably didn't need to be trapped to be killed at all (making shield wall unnecessary).

In every other situation, mobility and ranged are king and shield wall has no business being used. Evasion and weapon skills will always cost less stamina and offer more in return.

Also, shield wall gives an emote indicator that it is active so no one will ever be caught by surprise like they might with a weapon skill.

Ways to fix Shield Wall

In many situations, using shield wall doesn't actually confer a defensive benefit at all. In those situations where it does, maintaining a shield wall for a significant amount of time is difficult and as a general rule kiting > tanking. If shield wall cost 0 stamina beyond the 10 to activate it would still be a weak ability because fundamentally trading defense for parry is a downgrade. This is especially the case when you can kite and trade with a slow strong weapon for free which is impossible to do with shield wall.

Option 1: Massive buffs to this ability

If shield wall cost nothing per parry and also didn't lower your defense it would have a clear and distinct use in pve in those situations where you have time to set up and let the enemies come to you. Allies wouldn't be able to pass through, and you'd have to give up your position if an enemy got past you. Trading mobility for defense and making it much more pvp viable as you can't easily beat down the shield (sunder would still be a viable option for breaking through a shield line). This would also allow finesse buffs and evasion nerfs to a) make evasion less OP but also not need to balance out the other weak skills and b) do something like lower the cooldown of counter attack significantly so light armor shield/parry users have their own viable niche.

Option 2: Replace Shield Wall completely

If we didn't want to create unique playstyles for light armor and heavy armor shield users we could replace the skill entirely with something else that was thematic and useful. A classic ability using a shield is the ability to guard someone else with it, and something similar to the bodyguard mastery ability in vanilla UO would fit nicely. Being able to absorb damage from someone else in a game where aggro is harder to hold and ranged attacks tear up the backline would be fun, interactive, and useful. For all warrior templates it combined with aid would be a potent way to help someone else and an enormous improvement in every way over the current implementation of shield wall.

Justin Richards
Posts: 31
Character: Justin Richards

Re: Shield Wall

Post by Justin Richards » March 21st, 2019, 4:36 pm

I believe finesse doesn't effect regen rates here

revenant
Posts: 43
Character: Black

Re: Shield Wall

Post by revenant » March 21st, 2019, 5:02 pm

Yes, finesse no longer affects stam regen(only linked to dex), raging no longer impacts hp regen (now str), and there is no more arcane conditioning (mana regen is linked to int).

Toroic
Posts: 18
Character: Elric Faust

Re: Shield Wall

Post by Toroic » March 21st, 2019, 7:50 pm

I appreciate the clarification, though I still think that finesse is probably more appealing to mages than heavy armor is due to the stat point investment required. So it shouldn’t dramatically change the major analysis.

That said, do either of you have feedback on the changes suggested for shield wall?

revenant
Posts: 43
Character: Black

Re: Shield Wall

Post by revenant » March 21st, 2019, 11:48 pm

Yeah, I would have it counter trip or knockdown as a mechanic.

Jeremold
Posts: 27
Character: Jeremold

Re: Shield Wall

Post by Jeremold » March 24th, 2019, 1:09 pm

I have not used it before, no shields at all really.

Having a trip counter would be a good idea, shield wall looks like it needs some bigger boons.

I didn't know it cost Stam repeatedly, seems excessive for what you're getting in return.

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