Change the Shield enemies

[Seth Wulfstone]

As it currently stands, with the addition of shield enemies, the game can end up being insufferable. Being evasive and striking has been a simple means of dungeon running, but with the addition of these buggers they break it up. They wield shields that will shave your damage to them down to about a tenth, this is because they've added "Heavy attacks" for weapons.

Some of the heavy attacks for weapons are pretty good, examples like the Axe getting a throw where it'll boomerang back to you, Gauntlets getting a spin attack that seems to give you i-frames? Don't quote me on that. Even the new Blunderbuss functions as a shotgun with a heavy attack to change it to a half-room or so snipe, which is awesome.

Certain other weapons are a bit more awkward, like the Dagger that spawns a trail of daggers in a delayed line and the Hammer is the worst case offender since the heavy attack from it is just.. Charging an attack while walking around, into an awkward swing that is a spin but doesn't seem to actually hit enemies around you, just in the targeted point? Which, if you've played with the hammer, it's a bit awkward to use in this way. You can aim with WASD and you can aim with your mouse, so if you're walking with WASD and aiming with your mouse... That's just a really weird combination to make you fumble with controls.

Hammer I think outright needs a change to its heavy attack, it feels too bad to use even with better controls and understanding.

Shield enemies sorta slow the roll of the run, especially since there's no counterplay beyond using a heavy attack. You can't roll behind them to hit them in the back, you can't lay into the shield to break their guard, you can't bait out a swing and attack them afterwards.. It's extremely two dimensional and bland of an inclusion for a regular enemy type that I'm guaranteed to see in every other room or so.

[M1DKN1GH7]

from my personal experience, Darkwood is the only area where i'd say the shielded enemies are common enough to be annoying.
i personally have to agree that the shielded enemies are annoying and really just slow down the game, but aside from the hammer, each of the hold attacks is reasonably capable of getting at least one hit off on them, which is all that's needed.
but yeah, they could do with some tweaking for sure. in their current state, shielded enemies really don't bring anything to the table other than inconvenience.

[kaincypher]

well, in addition to the previous comment, most of the heavy attacks are pretty useless except for the dagger, which is fine since it's my least favorite weapon. enemies be getting crazy spongy at the end so anything other than an ax or hammer doubles the time on each crusade.

[Star Sage]

I find the hammer to indeed be bad against the shield enemies, or the tennis one, since it swings just that little bit too slow to really be useful.

That said, it IS a case of they show up mostly in Darkwood to make that place a bit more interesting, given its the starter area, and otherwise has almost no enemies with gimmicks beyond running into you with TOUCH OF DEATH attacks, so it IS acceptable, even if it is annoying.

[Cursed Hawkins]

Originally posted by Star Sage:

I find the hammer to indeed be bad against the shield enemies, or the tennis one, since it swings just that little bit too slow to really be useful.

There's a marker that can help with the hammer, the animation for the hammer can make it look like it's too slow.