No criticisms, but want to point out the various ways shield bash stands out as well made. First off I plugged it into my oldest character, a block focused paladin, so it of course compliments the character perfectly with the built-in damage scaling with block chance. It replaced ring of shields which I previously only used for the block effectiveness buff - most sentinel skills are only really useful for their temporary buffs, which shield bash of course gives with its block buff, but it has a lot more to it than that. Specifically it’s nice you can go with either 2 cooldown charges, double damage longer cooldown or no cooldown, or even without a shield. All the other nodes are very strong too though and that’s what really stands out. An absolute 100% chance to apply stun, ignite, armor shred, bleed, frailty, blind, slow, it’s nice to have an offensive skill that you don’t use constantly but it has powerful effects, especially high damage if you’re bleed focused like I am. Ricochet and wall of shields are also really cool interactions.
More skills like this one would be highly appreciated. Great work with shield bash.
Tried it with my Shield Throw pally as it seemed at first glance to be a perfect fit (Captain America anyone?) with the various synergies but unfortunately I found that other skills worked better and Shield Bash seemed clunky in the fast throwing playstyle - I realised after a few levels that I was not even using it so swapped it out again.
Glad you found it useful… New skills are always great and its good to see people finding viable builds to use them.
Kinda like Vapourfire, I’d like to see more nodes be useful if it doesn’t have a cooldown, that’s a bit disappointing at the moment. IMO, all the nodes should have an effect if there’s either a cooldown or not a cooldown.
I would agree with you llama. Shield bash is weird right now because a lot of the interesting nodes are locked behind a cool down which limits it’s versatility when build making. By default it’s pretty good control skill,. I think it might be useful for hardcore players who are in a bind to have a button to press that can interrupt and stun. And I think having that option is awesome. That being said, I am not sure about removing it’s CD and using it as a damage supplement yet… Since it has no attack speed and heavy mana cost, it’s frustrating to take the skill to the next level. Every interesting node that would provide a supplement to a non-cd SB costs mana and it adds up quickly. You will end up with around 30-45~ mana cost going no cd/bleed stacks/phy scaling. I personally don’t know why these are so mana locked considering the ability has no attack speed scaling. You can barely spec these nodes and spam SB with no attack speed; it doesn’t even matter. It’s just so expensive; the mana cost is a nerf to attack speed in itself.
I am currently trying to make a bleed/ignite stacking build with non cd shield bash but i’m getting to the point where I’m questioning if I could just get better results with a ability that scales attack speed and minimal mana cost. To keep up with the mana cost currently I have to go mana regen on all my gear + mana eff + mana unique chest; considering even investing into higher mana pool. It’s little frustrating for me that I feel like I have to do so much just to try to make it feel good for mapping.
I just feel like if they removed the attack speed nerf to shield bash the cost of mana within the ability is limiting enough nerf high end capabilities. No one will be able to spam it; it just costs so much. You would have to invest everything into mana pool/regen and it would be very hard to sustain without rotational combos with Rive. The base damage isn’t also overwhelming amazing that someone is going to nuke a boss with attack speed benefits (the hit damage seems pretty comparable with Rive). I wouldn’t mind for example if they having us path through juggernaut to allow for attack speed benefits. Or attacking attack speed in the tree as it’s only source.
Also I like to mention that the only other class that could supplement SB no cd style of play the best would be void knight since it could echo but since the ability is purely phys/fire it has little to no synergy in that tree outside of a few nodes (in vk tree). I wish there would be a better way to scale it. This could also be fixed by allowing some kind of void conversion or added void damage.
Agreed, and it doesn’t even scale as well as rive, since rive has so many multipliers and crit nodes in the tree.
Personally, I only find two nodes useful enough to use Shield Bash right now. The 15% block chance one and the frailty stack one. Everything else seems either way underpowered or far too clunky and unsustainable to be worth.
Skills that are free do either do too much damage or the mana spenders are vastly underpowered
Shield Throw is a great example, this skill isn’t even usable with even a 2 mana cost, soon as you take it to 0 it becomes playable and can invest into attack speed
Every single character I have spends no mana or such little mana it doesn’t effect me, so you eventually have maybe 5 skills you can play to avoid dealing with skills being utterly painful to use
