From the Twitch Q&A: bashing shields

[Boeroer]

Hi Josh & Aarik,

 

thanks a lot for answering those questions and feeding us with infos.

 

One thing though: looking through the said video I noticed how you guys answered a question about bashing shields:

 

 

"Will bashing be changed from PoE1? It's a cool concept but seems like a dps loss in a lot of cases."

 

You answered something like that it's not supposed to be a big dps boost. One should use dual wieldung or two handers for that. A shield is suppoed to give you deflection and not dps. So far, so good, but I think you misunderstood:

 

The thing is that bashing shields reduce the dps compared to normal shields!

It seems you don't know about that (which is understandable).

Bashing doesn't speed up your attacks - so instead of hitting things with your good and sharp sword every 2 seconds, you will alternate between sword's good damage and the low damage of bashing. You will do less dps than a guy who uses a regular shield!

 

Let me put it this way: If you wield sword & shield and attack 10 times with that sword - it does 10 damage - you will do 100 damage in total, right?

Now if you attack 5 times with the same sword and 5 times with a shield bash that does 3 damage, you will only do 65 damage (I made the numbers up to make it plain).

In the same amount of time (because unlike dual wielding, using a bashing shield doesn't speed up your attacks) you will do less damage compared to a normal shield guy.

The worst thing about this is that bashing also costs you enchantment slots. You basically pay for a dps loss. 

 

Bashing must at least cause the same amount of damage as your main weapon if you don't want to produce a dps loss compared to normal shields. This is difficult to achieve and also not very logical. So another way to upvalue bashing would be a stun- or prone-on-crit effect, a small push effect on hit/crit, disorienting on hit (basically like some unique weapons have), dazing or whatever comes to mind which would make bashing useful and not a gimpage. One could also think of an active ability like Knockdown like the Girdle of the Driving Wave has: Knockdown 1/encounter. All those stuff would be plausible and not hard to implement.

Some of the PoE1 shields had things like that (or even way better), like Badgradr's Barricade or Dragon's Maw. The other bash shields would have been better if there weren't bashing on them at all.

 

I hope you understand what I mean. Now you surely agree that something has to be done.

 

It wasn't my question by the way. But a good one I think.

Edited February 6, 2017 by Boeroer

[JerekKruger]

Thanks for creating this thread Boeroer. I'd love for bashing to be something worth using in Deadfire.

[Boeroer]

Yeah, it really is a cool concept. I would love to see a nice, but not too powerful effect when using bashing shields.

Edited February 6, 2017 by Boeroer

[JerekKruger]

Probably the simplest solution would be to make it dual wielding, but make sure bash remains very low damage. Also don't allow it to benefit from two-weapon style (though of course do allow it to benefit from sword and shield style).

[Boeroer]

Right, that would also be an easy solution. But the reduced recovery not only influences autoattacks, but also the primary attacks of special attacks - so for example a monk could spam Force of Anguish a lot faster just because he wears a bashing shield even though it's only a primary attack. That seems to be weird. But it's also the case when dual wielding - so maybe yeah, it might be a good solution.

Edited February 6, 2017 by Boeroer

[JerekKruger]

I'm sure we could come up with a better solution. Your suggestions of stun or on prone might be a way to go, though perhaps a little overpowered? Another option would be interrupt based which given the changes to interrupt in Deadfire might be a nice addition.

 

A very rough and ready solution would be to have bashing shields add a small amount of damage to your main weapon and not have them make separate attacks. You could still intersperse attack animations with shield bashes, but the actual damage rolls behind the scenes would be made with your main weapon.

 

My suggestion of making it dual wielding was simply the simplest solution I could think of on.

[kirottu]

Or make shield bashing a utility talent instead of dps talent. Shield bash would stun or interrupt casting or both instead of doing damage.

[draego]

+1

[Doppelschwert]

This is exactly what I thought when I watched the stream, thanks for pointing it out here!

[Mygaffer]

I totally got what you were talking about on the stream and the fact that the issue wasn't quite picked up by Josh.

I kind of think the fix for that is make shield bash a retaliation type of thing. Bashing on a shield would give a character an X% chance to instantly cause 7-10 crush damage to an attacker who either glances or misses you with a melee attack. When it procs it is an instant effect that does not effect recovery time.

 

It fits in with the logic of fighting, i.e. some guy whiffs an attack at you and you bash him in the head with your shield, and allows bashing to be really interesting and useful without being over powered in anyway.

 

With it being instant you no longer worry about it lowering your DPS. Even if it never procs your characters recovery and thus DPS will remain the same. When it does proc it will be doing so against misses and grazes, meaning you can get some tactical stuff going on with blindness effects and other effects that reduce accuracy in the hopes of getting more bashes in. Now bashing has real value and real use case, even if it isn't very powerful.

Of course you'd have to play with those numbers, is a 50% chance on a miss or graze and 7-10 instant damage, is it 20% on a miss or graze but 15-20 crush damage?

I really like this idea of how shield bashing could work and hope Josh and the team consider something like this.
 

Edited February 6, 2017 by Mygaffer

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Or make shield bashing a utility talent instead of dps talent. Shield bash would stun or interrupt casting or both instead of doing damage.

This is probably the best solution with it being limited per emcounter or something.

[Yonjuro]

 

"Will bashing be changed from PoE1? It's a cool concept but seems like a dps loss in a lot of cases."

 

You answered something like that it's not supposed to be a big dps boost. One should use dual wieldung or two handers for that. A shield is suppoed to give you deflection and not dps. So far, so good, but I think you misunderstood:

 

The thing is that bashing shields reduce the dps compared to normal shields!

It seems you don't know about that (which is understandable).

Bashing doesn't speed up your attacks - so instead of hitting things with your good and sharp sword every 2 seconds, you will alternate between sword's good damage and the low damage of bashing. You will do less dps than a guy who uses a regular shield!

 

Let me put it this way: If you wield sword & shield and attack 10 times with that sword - it does 10 damage - you will do 100 damage in total, right?

Now if you attack 5 times with the same sword and 5 times with a shield bash that does 3 damage, you will only do 65 damage (I made the numbers up to make it plain).

In the same amount of time (because unlike dual wielding, using a bashing shield doesn't speed up your attacks) you will do less damage compared to a normal shield guy.

The worst thing about this is that bashing also costs you enchantment slots. You basically pay for a dps loss. 

 

 

 

 Based on Josh's response, it sounds like this isn't working as intended. Maybe this should be a bug report.

Edited February 6, 2017 by Yonjuro

[limaxophobiacq]

Right, that would also be an easy solution. But the reduced recovery not only influences autoattacks, but also the primary attacks of special attacks - so for example a monk could spam Force of Anguish a lot faster just because he wears a bashing shield even though it's only a primary attack. That seems to be weird. But it's also the case when dual wielding - so maybe yeah, it might be a good solution.

 

IDK exactly how bashing works, but assuming it's essentially like dual-wielding with a 'shield bash' weapon in the left hand except you dont get the +0.5 attack speed and two-weapon style doesnt apply but its still its own attack with its own unique animation and recovery couldnt they just make the animation and recovery for the bash attack itself very fast (like half the time of a light weapon attack) without affecting primary attacks or special attacks?

Edited February 6, 2017 by limaxophobiacq

[draego]

 

 

Feargus

DEVELOPER

 

@draego - I just IMd Josh and asked him to look at the thread.

 

Feb 6, 2017 | 05:13 PM

 

We got some eyes on the issue

[JerekKruger]

IDK exactly how bashing works, but assuming it's essentially like dual-wielding with a 'shield bash' weapon in the left hand except you dont get the +0.5 attack speed and two-weapon style doesnt apply but its still its own attack with its own unique animation and recovery couldnt they just make the animation and recovery for the bash attack itself very fast (like half the time of a light weapon attack) without affecting primary attacks or special attacks?

 

In theory yes. In practice however it would be hard to pull off because as well as doing low damage compared to proper weapons, bash shields also can't get any damage improving enchants like Exceptional, Beast Slayer or (most importantly) a Lash. This means you'd either have to balance them to be worthwhile when paired with a relatively unenchanted weapon, in which case they'd be terrible when paired with something heavily enchanted; or you balance them for use with heavily enchanted weapons, in which case they'd be a big boost with low tier weapons.

[JerekKruger]

We got some eyes on the issue

 

Excellent news!

[Boeroer]

 

IDK exactly how bashing works, but assuming it's essentially like dual-wielding with a 'shield bash' weapon in the left hand except you dont get the +0.5 attack speed and two-weapon style doesnt apply but its still its own attack with its own unique animation and recovery couldnt they just make the animation and recovery for the bash attack itself very fast (like half the time of a light weapon attack) without affecting primary attacks or special attacks?

In theory yes. In practice however it would be hard to pull off because as well as doing low damage compared to proper weapons, bash shields also can't get any damage improving enchants like Exceptional, Beast Slayer or (most importantly) a Lash. This means you'd either have to balance them to be worthwhile when paired with a relatively unenchanted weapon, in which case they'd be terrible when paired with something heavily enchanted; or you balance them for use with heavily enchanted weapons, in which case they'd be a big boost with low tier weapons.

Yes - it would be very difficult to balance with the PoE1 mechanics.

 

Also, making it faster will still result in dps loss unless you push the damage further. It already is pretty fast.

 

Adding some kind of utility seems to be the easiest way.

 

The retaliation idea also makes sense and would solve the problem.

Edited February 7, 2017 by Boeroer

[Mygaffer]

 

 

IDK exactly how bashing works, but assuming it's essentially like dual-wielding with a 'shield bash' weapon in the left hand except you dont get the +0.5 attack speed and two-weapon style doesnt apply but its still its own attack with its own unique animation and recovery couldnt they just make the animation and recovery for the bash attack itself very fast (like half the time of a light weapon attack) without affecting primary attacks or special attacks?

In theory yes. In practice however it would be hard to pull off because as well as doing low damage compared to proper weapons, bash shields also can't get any damage improving enchants like Exceptional, Beast Slayer or (most importantly) a Lash. This means you'd either have to balance them to be worthwhile when paired with a relatively unenchanted weapon, in which case they'd be terrible when paired with something heavily enchanted; or you balance them for use with heavily enchanted weapons, in which case they'd be a big boost with low tier weapons.

Yes - it would be very difficult to balance with the PoE1 mechanics.

 

Also, making it faster will still result in dps loss unless you push the damage further. It already is pretty fast.

 

Adding some kind of utility seems to be the easiest way.

 

The retaliation idea also makes sense and would solve the problem.

 

The reason I really like the retaliation idea is not just because it completely fixes the reason most smart people won't use the larder door but by only have it proc on a melee miss or graze it really fits well with the idea of Eder fighting against a thug, the thug lunges at Eder with his club which merely glances off his pauldrons and it leaves the thug open to a well placed bash with the edge of his shield into the thug's side, after which Eder continues the downward swing of his saber he was about to make anyway.

 

And the strats it opens up, like using Nightshroud with a bashing shield, if your blindness procs then you'll be able to bash more often.

 

It could also be cool for a bash to do something else, like slightly reduce enemy constitution or reflex for five or ten seconds, who knows.

[Boeroer]

Yes, it would work. The only fiddly thing might be the combination of bashing (chance of crush retaliation on miss/graze) and normal retaliation (pierce retaliation on graze/hit/crit). You would have double retaliation on grazes. Maybe it should be a 100% crush retaliation when you get missed? It would be supergreat with low level mobs but wouldn't be very powerful against tougher, more accurate foes - without having any negative effect whatsoever.

 

Let's see what Josh thinks about bashing after reading this. Thanks draego and Feargus for leading Josh to this thread.

[draego]

+1 for esoteric POE 1 issues  . Gotta love this game. 

Edited February 7, 2017 by jnb0364

[JerekKruger]

+1 for esoteric POE 1 issues  . Gotta love this game. 

 

Esoteric? What you talking about? This is easily the single most important issue from PoE that needs fixing in PoE2. PoE was literally unplayable once I realised that the Larder Door was objectively worse than a generic Large Shield...

 

[MaxQuest]

Probably the simplest solution would be to make it dual wielding, but make sure bash remains very low damage. Also don't allow it to benefit from two-weapon style (though of course do allow it to benefit from sword and shield style).

I know it may sound weird...

I've just took a look at my table of base attack/recovery logged values, plus some old spreadsheet of frapsed data of [dagger+shield] vs [dagger+bashing_shield] and it looks like:

- when you make an attack with main-hand, it is not considered as dual-wielding, and you get the Single1H penalty for that hand.

- when you make an attack with off-hand that holds a bashing shield, you do not get that penalty. 

 

I will retest it later, but for now can say that attacks with bashing shield have the same recovery as attacks with an offhand dagger while dual-wielding. Main-hand through has the recovery as if not dual-wielding.

 

In any case: at zero-recovery bashing shield is still a dps loss.

[Rolandur]

 

Probably the simplest solution would be to make it dual wielding, but make sure bash remains very low damage. Also don't allow it to benefit from two-weapon style (though of course do allow it to benefit from sword and shield style).

I know it may sound weird...

I've just took a look at my table of base attack/recovery logged values, plus some old spreadsheet of frapsed data of [dagger+shield] vs [dagger+bashing_shield] and it looks like:

- when you make an attack with main-hand, it is not considered as dual-wielding, and you get the Single1H penalty for that hand.

- when you make an attack with off-hand that holds a bashing shield, you do not get that penalty. 

 

I will retest it later, but for now can say that attacks with bashing shield have the same recovery as attacks with an offhand dagger while dual-wielding. Main-hand through has the recovery as if not dual-wielding.

 

In any case: at zero-recovery bashing shield is still a dps loss.

 

 

Are you manually extracting the combat log text and using the frames as time-stamp data points? This shows how lazy I am asking for a way to write the combat logs to a text file with CPU millisecond time-stamps so I can automate parsing. =)

[Boeroer]

Not only then. The bash has lower ACC than the main weapon (even though it gets +1 per level since it's considered to be an ability), you can't enchant the bash damage or pimp it otherwise and even though the speed of the bash attack is faster than that of the main hand: it still slides between your normal main weapon attacks (which does a lot more damage) and delays them.

 

The very low damage of bash (that nearly always results in MIN damage) is not enough to make up for that delay. That's what I meant when I said that bash should do at least the same damage as the main weapon to be of use. Then it would clearly result in a dps increase: the attacks would come faster because bash recovery is shorter. Can't say where the break even point is though. Maybe you can with your data at hand.

[JerekKruger]

In any case: at zero-recovery bashing shield is still a dps loss.

 

Yeah, to make it worthwhile I think you'd need much faster attack animations as well.

 

I think an alternative method, like making Bash an automatic retaliatory attack when an enemy misses or grazes or having Bash do something interruption related, is the way to go.