Shurikens’ Blade Shield node is actually quite good d,amage-wise, that part is fine. Personally I’m trying to use it for its consistent hit rate with a Falconer’s Mark → Feather Knife build, which it’s a good fit for.
The problem I have with it is that it has an extremely small circle of coverage that cannot be scaled in any way. I was hoping the Aerodynamic node (increased speed and range) would affect coverage, but it doesn’t. Generic area of effect increases don’t affect it either such as from Falconer’s Blast Radius node. Not to say I thought that would affect it, just that I wish they did.
Theoretically one could scale movement to compensate for its range, but it’s just so small, smaller than melee skills, that the gameplay versatility and enjoyment is poor. Sometimes I’m right next to an enemy and realize I’m still not even hitting it. Or, there might be situations where I simply cannot get close enough.
Please provide some way to meaningfully affect its coverage and/or increase its base coverage. It would make sense to me that range/area of effect increases affect its orbit range and projectile speed increases affect the orbiting speed (such as from Aerodynamic).
It doesn’t have to be too much. The shrine that provides a similar Blade Vortex-like skill is noticeably larger and feels like what I’d expect Blade Shield to be with a moderate amount of scaling. Maelstrom is far larger as well and has some design overlap. I get you wouldn’t want them to be too similar, but the size difference is a bit much.
This part is separate, but related. I wish I could disable some skills from expending Shadows. With my aforementioned Falconer build, I run into an issue where I would much prefer to expend my Shadows (generated from Smoke Cloud) with Dive Bomb Shadow Falcons instead of Shurikens. There isn’t a way for me to line up the timing to skirt around it. I would appreciate a node to opt out of Shadow expending on skills that have it by default, in some builds.