Revert Sword/Shield nerf to Arcane Combat/Arcane Destruction

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SageAcrin
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Revert Sword/Shield nerf to Arcane Combat/Arcane Destruction

#1 Post by SageAcrin »

Sword/Shield was a very balanced, interesting take on ABs that gave them a reasonable mix of ease of use and power, and had as many people calling it overpowered as underpowered(even before GWF was removed, which obviously benefits them).

I don't know why this change was made-apparently it was in the same set of changes as Unarmed Combat, which was a massive commit that I'm not entirely sure DarkGod had a chance to look through thoroughly.

I assume the change was made to promote two-handers, but it largely will have the opposite effect of narrowing Arcane Blade builds to just dualwielding instead-so there's no benefit to this change that I can see.

Alternatively, I can see an argument for a compromise 75% instead of sword/board's current 50% nerf.

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Re: Revert Sword/Shield nerf to Arcane Combat/Arcane Destruc

#2 Post by Doctornull »

I can kinda see where the nerf is coming from: the Shield Offense tree has more single-target multi-attacks than are available to dual-wielders.

Some dual-wielders get Momentum, which does boost attack rates significantly -- and thus would boost Arcane Combat triggers -- but not the Arcane Blade.

ABs could have Flurry at cooldown 12, or get Shield Pummel and Assault at cooldown 6 plus Shield Smash at cooldown 12. That's a lot of proc chances.

However the shield guy's bump attack is now so much worse than either other option that I dunno if it's actually a good trade-off.
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Re: Revert Sword/Shield nerf to Arcane Combat/Arcane Destruc

#3 Post by Atarlost »

It also doesn't do to forget that it's a lot harder to find good shortstaves than good staves. With most of the damage allegedly coming from spell procs two handed builds aren't getting nothing from their decision. Removing the multiple attack advantage without removing the stave availability advantage is going to ruin the other builds.
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Zeyphor
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Re: Revert Sword/Shield nerf to Arcane Combat/Arcane Destruc

#4 Post by Zeyphor »

honestly I'm wondering what happens with arcane destruction when a dwarf adventurer is dual wielding shields
is it 75% 50% or 37.5% proc rate for arcane destruction?
I really wanna try out an adventurer who dual wields lunar shields with arcane combat(lightning)but I'd be so disappointed if arcane destruction had a 37.5% proc rate for him

StarKeep
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Re: Revert Sword/Shield nerf to Arcane Combat/Arcane Destruc

#5 Post by StarKeep »

Seeing how Sword n Board is so heavily focused on actives to make use of them, why not exploit this?

Allow the percent to go back to 100% on counter-attacks, for example.
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Radon26
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Re: Revert Sword/Shield nerf to Arcane Combat/Arcane Destruc

#6 Post by Radon26 »

about dual wielding a shields.
seeing as both dual wielding, and sword/shield, have half a chance compared to 2/h, I think its just check whether the offhand slot is in use.

which means 50%

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