[1.01] Arcane Blade with a Shield, overpowered?

[averaen]

Character profile here: http://te4.org/characters/19271/tome/f9 ... 32dfcb7edf

This was my first win. I had never tried shield arcane blades even once before. The synergy between Arcane Combat + Arcane Destruction + Assault (+Greater Weapon Focus in the late-game) is just absurd. I would regularly hit for 2000 - 3000 damage on bosses with assault. 5/5 Crystalline Focus ensured I was doing damage to anything, regardless of how high their resistances were. For prodigies I took Spectral Shield and Eternal Guard. Giving me a two turn block that blocked everything. I never felt more than slightly in danger after I cleared Dreadfell. The final boss was a joke, and I even rolled over Atamathon without breaking a sweat.

Has anyone else tried this build? Is this overpowered? I can give more details about the run on request.

[wobbly]

I found eternal guard to be overpowered on my bulwark even without spectral shield. With it it's just too hard for a lot of things to damage you.

[Rholor]

2000-3000? Thats not much at all. On my AB with dual wield i damaged bosses for 10000 dmg with a single flurry. So i wouldnt say the offensiv power of shield ABs is overpowered.

[CaptainTrips]

Anything that can kill the strongest mob in the game without breaking a sweat is obviously overpowered (at least relative to the majority of characters). Not that this is necessarily a bad thing; just depends on what kind of game experience you want.

[averaen]

2000-3000? Thats not much at all. On my AB with dual wield i damaged bosses for 10000 dmg with a single flurry. So i wouldnt say the offensiv power of shield ABs is overpowered.

I'm probably vastly underestimating. I managed 10k on my best hit, but on the final few bosses a combination of low accuracy and high target resists was dropping it to 2k - 3k. I still killed both of the final sorcerers in three or four turns each, while taking almost no damage.

[SageAcrin]

Anything that can kill the strongest mob in the game without breaking a sweat is obviously overpowered (at least relative to the majority of characters). Not that this is necessarily a bad thing; just depends on what kind of game experience you want.

Nah, it's pretty usual for melee.

The exceptions are weird things like Berserker, that don't specialize in sustain damage. They still can do like 2000 though, with something like Death Dance.

Melee has to have something on spells, doesn't it?

(In fairness, Corruptors can match that kind of damage and keep it up, but Corruptors are just amazingly good at damage. That's their thing.)

Of course AB can sorta be ranged as well as sorta being melee, but they have all those stats to juggle too. It works out later in the game, but early and especially mid-game, it can be rough.

[wobbly]

Nah, it's pretty usual for melee.

Is it also usual for them to be able to slice off 200 or so pts of damage after resists in all elements, on every attack, every round?
Someone posted a randart with over 700 block. That'd be -700 on end damage with eternal guard & spectral shield. More against most attacks (it'd block a 700 physical, 700 lightning hit for instance)

[jenx]

I can give more details about the run on request.

If you didn't use fire or lightning, did you not use arcane combat till level 10?

[Rholor]

You just put 4 points into lightning or fire and when you lvl up you just take out 4 points of one of those skills and put the 5th one into one other skill. Than put back the 4 points into either lightning or fire.

I am doing that right now up to lvl 20 on my nightmare roguelike AB´s.

[SageAcrin]

Nah, it's pretty usual for melee.

Is it also usual for them to be able to slice off 200 or so pts of damage after resists in all elements, on every attack, every round?
Someone posted a randart with over 700 block. That'd be -700 on end damage with eternal guard & spectral shield. More against most attacks (it'd block a 700 physical, 700 lightning hit for instance)

If you're asking if Eternal Guard is overpowered, the answer may be yes. But yes, that's usual for any shield specialist that invests in Eternal Guard-notably, I'm pretty sure you could get that kind of block on anyone you wanted(mages, anyone?).

Generally speaking, though, 200 damage reduction, every round, in exchange for requiring one third of your turns to be devoted to it...even with the Counterstrike bonus to damage, it's pretty balanced. Anything dealing 200 damage was probably not a threat, so it mostly nulls out heavily multi-strike oriented enemies. Then you have to cover the right element(or take a Prodigy, and Prodigies give large benefits in general) with whatever shield you have too.

(I personally prefer to swap shields more than use a Prodigy, though there's obvious benefits to Spectral, namely being guarded by surprise attacks of an element you didn't expect.)

And sure, Counterstrike is a lot of damage added, but you have to be in the range to use it. Keeping that 200 damage barrier up means that you're spending a third of your time not moving towards enemies, and it means you're running an automatic option(or mashing Block every three turns) that you may screw up, leave on at the wrong time, and kill yourself with it.

So no, on base I don't think it's busted. The best shield in the game for block that isn't a randart is Titanic, I believe, at 320-two Prodigies for a 320 damage shaving that takes a third of your turns is really good, but I don't think it's broken. It's a little hard to assess because it's so odd, but...

The reason it may be yes, for me, is randarts and dualblock(Stone Warden). The outlier cases are weird. I've gotten 200~ shields from Randarts, and I've seen 600(700 is a new one on me, that's freakishly rare). 400 isn't all that odd, either, and two 200 shields is still 400 block. It becomes a lot more questionable then. Weird case, and probably means Block just needs some kind of reducing returns or a cap.

[wobbly]

Apologies if I'm highjacking the thread with my rant.

Generally speaking, though, 200 damage reduction, every round, in exchange for requiring one third of your turns to be devoted to it...even with the Counterstrike bonus to damage, it's pretty balanced. Anything dealing 200 damage was probably not a threat, so it mostly nulls out heavily multi-strike oriented enemies. Then you have to cover the right element(or take a Prodigy, and Prodigies give large benefits in general) with whatever shield you have too.

(I personally prefer to swap shields more than use a Prodigy, though there's obvious benefits to Spectral, namely being guarded by surprise attacks of an element you didn't expect.)

In practice it's more then 200. Try it in the large room of the voratun armoury, it's more like 200x20. The time spent on blocking seems a big deal but you save it on time you'd otherwise have to use on regeneration or heal. With step-up (which an AB can also get) your almost always entering melee with block still-up & with ranged attackers on counter-strike.

The reason it may be yes, for me, is randarts and dualblock(Stone Warden). The outlier cases are weird. I've gotten 200~ shields from Randarts, and I've seen 600(700 is a new one on me, that's freakishly rare). 400 isn't all that odd, either, and two 200 shields is still 400 block. It becomes a lot more questionable then. Weird case, and probably means Block just needs some kind of reducing returns or a cap.

This seems the case with all randarts, a bit of luck & you get something ridiculously unbalanced compared to anything else in the game. I'd suggest not allowing the same bonus to triple-stack, though I'm not sure if that's what is causing the problem.

[SageAcrin]

In practice it's more then 200. Try it in the large room of the voratun armoury, it's more like 200x20. The time spent on blocking seems a big deal but you save it on time you'd otherwise have to use on regeneration or heal. With step-up (which an AB can also get) your almost always entering melee with block still-up & with ranged attackers on counter-strike.

200 damage reduction every round, not a 200 damage shield every round. 200 damage reduction means 200 off every attack. A few attacks consist of multiple hits, of course, and DoTs are effectively nulled(which is pretty nice), but that's still 200 damage reduction.

Relatively few attacks consist of evenly split strong hits, though. It's more often that you'll get the main damage in one lump sum, and then a bunch of smaller hits.

Yes, it's better than a 200 damage Shielding Rune, at least, with Eternal Guard, which is what changes this behavior(as it functions as worse than a 200 damage Shielding before that, albiet one with an offensive use as well.).

It is better against large crowds, but large crowds are all the time you least want to be wasting a third of your turns doing something. If you're not nulling a majority of damage in this time, the fact that you're using up a third of your actions on Block will kill you very fast. It's an interesting margin.

(Though, yes, Vor Armory is probably the time that Eternal Guard shines the most-it's possible to get a 200+ block shield by then and, if you can block Fire/Cold, it will cover all the damage really impressively. Tons of DoT there, too.)

I've ran a Bulwark through the game, Eternal Guard struck me as quite strong but reasonably balanced...but I didn't get any really good randart shields or anything of the type.

I've also ran a Stone Warden that got two good randart shields and could Block for 600+. This was...a little less reasonable...