Shield balance discussion

Sentinel
1

I’m interested to hear people’s feedback on this,

I’ve been playing lightning smite paladin with healing hands. Originally I was using a shield, but I had not capped block chance at 100% and maybe that would have been good to test, for the following discussion.

I dropped my shield and replaced it with an off-hand sword plus the Sentinel’s 30% more cast speed for swords passive node. I did that for the sake of healing hands and smite, which resulted in much greater survivability than having a shield. While the shield blocks attacks and reduces damage, having over 100%+ cast speed provides so much healing from smite+HH that my shield’s 70% block chance and 1000 block effectiveness simply paled in comparison. I survive much easier now at level 93+ killing Harbingers on my way to Aberroth.

But it made me think, conceptually shields should probably give more survivability in this scenario. Obviously that would be difficult to balance, and maybe it’s just an oversight due to the young age of the game. Maybe some would even argue that conceptually a very agile holy paladin should be able to cast spells so fast that he can forgo a shield - he’s just that quick. But in general you would expect shields to outweigh dual-wielding in the survival department.

What do you guys think?
Conceptually, do you like that speed and healing can surpass using a defensive shield in terms of survival?
Or do you also get the feeling that shields should be favoured a bit more?

I’m looking at this mainly from a conceptual / lore perspective. We know the result from the numbers already by my anecdote.

1 Like
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I tested so many forge guard ideas and struggle greatly on bosses .
I was low hp high armor high block high Dodge high dot mitigation but low hp .
1.1 k hp
But I achieved while buffed 128% block chance 83% armor
78 block effectiveness and like 70% dot protection and even did a build where I got 900 health regen.

Oh also my dps forge guard mode was 320k DPS unbuffed and would spike to 580k buffed .
100crit chance 340 crit multiplier .

But still they all failed compared to a dinky 80-110k DPS hp forge guard build . So dumb and frustrating .
Really limits build variety imo

3

Damage mitigation has exponential gains. Meaning the more mitigation you have the more effective it is. This especially takes off after 50% mitigation as each % point is far more effective than the last.

This mitigation has an enourmous effect on healing as well. If you add in 50% mitigation your heals will be 50% more effective that if you didn’t have that mitigation. So if you want to increase the effectiveness of your healing you always want to increase your mitigation otherwise you become what they say often in MMO’s (healing sponge) You require a lot of healing.

Shields do offer way more survivability. Especially when combined with other mitigation.

It does not. You can’t heal something that is dead. Defense will always be king in terms of surviving especially 1 shots or Dots. So that way your heals can be effective.

FG can be an amazing Boss killer. I just did 556 Corruption Lagon/Harbinger was super smooth. I can perma stun 500 C Orobyss and many bosses. I also can face tank T4 Julra.

1.1 k HP is just way too low EHP. (Effective Health Pool) Also your mitigation vs Dots is very poor due to the low EHP and protection you have.

2 Likes
4

You mean it’s LESS effective.

Each additional 1% of block mitigation gives me the SAME amount of reduction, up to the 85% cap. After reaching the 85% cap, each additional 1% of block mitigation gives LESS amount of reduction - specifically zero. To gain that additional 1% of mitigation, you need more Block Effectiveness.

For example:
Going from 0 Block Effectiveness to 1000 Block Effectiveness gives me ~35% block mitigation. +35
However, going from 1000 Block Effectiveness to 2000 Block Effectiveness gives me ~49% block mitigation. +14
Therefore, the more Block Effectiveness you have, the LESS block mitigation you get.

You’re confusing Healing with Health.

Health describes the maximum amount of punishment you can take. If you have mitigation, you can take more punishment using the same amount of Health.

For example:
With 1000 Health, I can take up to 999 damage and not die.
With 1000 Health and 50% mitigation, I can take up to 1499 damage and not die.

However, Healing isn’t the maximum amount. Instead, healing is a form of sustain, and scales inversely with the amount of mitigation.

For example:
With 1000 Health and 500 damage taken, healing can heal up to 500 health.
However, with 1000 Health and 50% mitigation, only 250 damage is taken, so healing can also only heal up to 250 health.

Any healing above the damage taken gets wasted, because you are already at full health, so the more mitigation you have, the LESS effective healing is.

Luckily too much healing is less of an issue, because players commonly forget to have forms of sustain in their builds :slight_smile:

5

Conceptually, you’re comparing a source of effective HP with a source of sustain, which are two different things.

Having a shield can help you survive one big hit. Speed wouldn’t help there at all.
Having speed helps you survive many small hits and/or continuous damage, but only due to the nature of your specific build.

For example:
You’re using Healing Hands, you have the Bleeding Heart amulet as well as the Hunger of the Void blessing. So your speed is triple-dipping in benefits:

  • healing from HH gets applied more often
  • leeching from amulet gets applied more often
  • leeching from blessing gets applied more often

However, a build that stacks Health Regeneration and doesn’t use Leech won’t get any more Regeneration from stacking Speed. Such a build does still get more EHP from using Shields though.

So, the question if speed and healing can surpass a shield depends on the build :slight_smile:

6

1000 block effectiveness is kinda low to be useful, because that’s like 36% mitigation. Reaching 100% block chance also would help to avoid surprises when you randomly don’t block big hit. Also shield is useless again DoT.
On the other hand paladin can benefit from shield in offense for spellcasters. For 18 passive points you get 46 spell damage with shield.
Perhaps shield could use some rework, but i don’t hope for it.

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That’s like saying the whole Glancing Blow mechanic isn’t useful :slight_smile:

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Shields are plenty strong, I have the opposite take. DWing is absolutely terrible and I try and avoid it whenever possible.

9% extra damage taken does not feel like a lot on paper but it is tremendous when you get to late game, or are perhaps struggling early on cause have not gotten health items yet or something.

Everytime I try and DW I just suddenly start dying like crazy, put my shield back on? dont die. Catalyst + sword? fine. Sword + Sword? Fighting for my damn life.

9% extra damage taken is just too steep for the benefits granted.

Especially considering in paladins case, with a few passive points and a well rolled sword, you can get back the lost spell damage and get other useful stats. Katana base is extremely strong and swords can get flat spell damage.

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And to think it used to be 15%…

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No I mean more effective.

  • If you have 20% mitigation and add 5% mitigation.
  • If you have 50% mitigation and add 5% mitigation.

The 5% mitigation isn’t linear. It has exponential returns and is more effective providing more than 5% reduction the more you have. Adding 5% mitigation when you have 50% mitigation is a much larger effective damage reduction than if you only have 20%.

Some people might stop at 80% reduction but that last 5% will drastically improve your mitigation and overall EHP and Healing you receive.

I am not. I have played a Tank for 20 years and understand how EHP works. It’s literally my job to be Tanky in a competitive environment as a Flag carrier in RBGs in WoW. Otherwise I die and my Healers yell at me or complain because I require too much Healing.

Yes mitigation makes Health move valuable as it raises EHP (Effective Health Pool) However I am also very correct in my statement that mitigation drastically improves healing you receive.

Here take this wonderful snipit from an age old thread on Resilience in WoW that discusses Damage mitigation vs Health.

If I gemmed full stamina I would have 10656 total stamina for a displayed health of 196,594. I would have 4,965 resilience giving me 46.59% damage reduction for a grand total effective health of 368,054.

If I gemmed full resilience I would have 9504 total stamina for a displayed health of 180,531. I would have 5676 resilience giving me 50.82% damage reduction for a grand total effective health of 367,061.

As you can see the difference in total effective health between the two configurations is 993 EH in favor of the full stamina configuration. That is a very minor gain and comes at the expense of 4.23% damage reduction, which when adjusted for relative value (damage reduction gets more valuable the more you have) equates to a relative damage reduction of about 7.85%. That means that with the resilience configuration not only will I be taking roughly 7.85% less damage than the stamina configuration all the time, heals will be roughly 7.85% more effective on me than in the stamina configuration.

Also to note in regards to healing vs EHP:

Meaning that if I get healed just one time for 15,000 effective health (7,500 displayed health at 50% dmg reduc) the 993 EH difference will be made up for. If I get healed for more than that (extremely likely being im a flag carrier) the balance shifts so far into the favor of resilience that it’s really not even a competition.

If you want your healing to be More Effective then you want higher Mitigation. This is just how it works. Otherwise you will be squishy and require MORE healing to sustain yourself and stay alive. (which often drains mana or other resources)

Conclusion: Damage mitigation is always more effective the more you have, mitigation makes your health more valuable. Mitigation drastically makes the healing you receive more effective.

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That is true all mitigation helps “some” even at low amounts. However 36% isn’t much from a block and isn’t that strong. Since the more damage reduction you have the more effective it gets as covered above. If you have 70% reduction from blocks it would be several times more effective.

Some people might stop at 80% reduction but that last 5% will drastically improve your mitigation and overall EHP and Healing you receive.

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@Abombdachamp I’m sure you have years of gaming under your belt, but that doesn’t mean you know what you’re talking about :slight_smile: The quote you copied about resilience is also wrong.

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You still don’t know what exponential is.
Nothing in LE (or any other ARPG) is exponential (other than stuff like ward decay formula).
If you have <whatever stat> and you turn it into <whatever stat> x 10, it’s still not exponential. It’s still linear. It’s just a higher value.

You think that because you look at your character sheet and see “I have 100 whatever, I’m adding 5 whatever and it becomes 110, so it’s exponential.”
It isn’t. It’s still linear. You see 100 on your character screen because your actual base value is 50. So when you add 5 it becomes 55 which is then multiplied by 2 to become 110.
But 5 is a 10% increase of 50 and 10 is a 10% increase of 100.
It’s always 10%, no matter how many multipliers you get.

So, having 10% mitigation: you add 5% more, it’s a 50% increase in mitigation.
Having 50% mitigation: you add 5% more, it’s a 10% increase in mitigation.
Having 90% mitigation: you add 5% more, it’s a 5% increase in mitigation.

I know math is complicated to grasp for some people, but I’ve explained this to you several times in several different ways and you still insist on the exponential misunderstanding.

2 Likes
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Well thats just an english language problem

its not exponential mathematically.

But it is more valuable.

Going from 98% reduction to 99% reduction is 1% linear reduction. its not exponential.

But going from 98% reduction to 99% reduction is 50% less damage taken. You go from taking 2% of total damage to 1% of total damage.

your argument is mostly on semantics rather then him being wrong persay.

Going from 50 DR to 55 DR is going from taking 50% of total damage to 45% of total damage, which is 10% less damage taken, going from 20 to 25 is going from 80 to 75, which is only 6% less damage taken

PoE has the same ideology with max res. For each point of max res you gain, you are gaining more damage reduction total then you did from the last and its pretty understood that getting more max res is more valuable the higher you stack it.

3 Likes
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It’s not wrong though. I do have decades of gaming under my belt playing a Tank. I’ve done it in competitive environments. Everything I have said is true and I wouldn’t of been able to make it too the #3 ranked Tank in North America in RBGs if the math or how mitigation works was wrong.

It’s not wrong the math has been explained on armor mitigation and other mitigation decades ago. It hasn’t changed.

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Well, you are partly correct there. It’s true that in damage reduction it usually works like that (even though not for resistances).
My argument was mostly due to a previous discussion we had about this exact same thing regarding Block Effectiveness and the +2 damage you get from the node. And why it was linear and why it has inherently diminishing returns.

So yeah, I guess I reacted a little harshly, but I did have to debate that many times trying to get the point across.

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You always react harshly. It’s very annoying to communicate with you and largely waste my time. Llama and Heavy are other offenders. You just forum warrior people to death. Would be cool if you weren’t like this.

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see, you are not quite right either. it does not have diminishing returns. Every 40 = 2. its again not exactly a true diminishing return its an effective loss of power because layering damage is more potent. but mathematically it isnt diminishing.

Armor is diminishing returns, 100 armor =/= a set amount of DR. But 40 block does = set damage gain.

The core issue here is how we as players present our arguments which generally involves not strictly correct terms like “exponential” and “diminishing” all arpg players use these terms, when they are not exactly correct!

Something like bleed thorn shields on druid, which provide increased physical damage, AND chance to bleed per stack, are not exponential, they are quadratic. But most laymen would call this “exponential” and most people would just understand what they mean.

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For the purpose of the game, it does though. 40 = 2, so if you add another 40 it equals 4 which is 100% increase. And if you add another 40 it equals 6 which is 50% increase. And if you add another 40 it equals 8 which is a 33% increase. So it has diminishing returns for progression.

Pot meet kettle?

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Okay you got me. I label things that are more valuable as exponential. If something has increasing returns I say that is exponential. It usually gets the point across but maybe it’s the wrong label.

Exactly and that is just annoying. Which is why I kinda am giving up in responding to these people because it’s just exhausting honestly and rather play the game. Which I’m going to do now.

Hopefully some of the correct information I posted in this thread is helpful and also thanks for explaining my position better using with correct english and math.