Useless Shields

[McBloed]

Shields get useless at some point in the game.
Shields take the unmodified damage and are gone in 1 or 2 hits.
So whats the point in using them or take items or skills that powers them?

[Voldski]

Originally posted by McBloed:

Shields get useless at some point in the game.
Shields take the unmodified damage and are gone in 1 or 2 hits.
So whats the point in using them or take items or skills that powers them?

Deflector version is not too bad it add extra 1500 health for duration, which doesn't disappear till the duration is over. Meaning if you take for instance 1500 damage it is still there and will regenerate hit point to that max pool until effect is gone.

But agree many of them are pointless, think one earlier ones that give 30% damage reduction seem pointless because once you get further in game you're likely to hit the hard cap on armor reduction around 60 so the damage reduction won't really help much at that point. Then one that give 1500 damage absorb before disappearing, think it is one that initially doesn't give the suppression it's supposed to give or am I think of another?

But think most use Digital weapons, deflector shield or some of the grenade options mostly.

[Zardoz]

You can have multiple deflector shields active at the same time, just get the Inocculator that has an enchant that drops supplies in 15% of all champion kills. I use them for my Close Combat Crusader and Close Combat Assassin. And there are enchants like "shields reflect damage" and the like.

[reptiliane]

My assassin has a passive adding shield on kill so i end with double the shield than health

[Gorwe]

Deflector also reflects damage back to the attacker(s). It's a reliable little thing.

With that said, I agree about the rest. Ok, Rosarius(5s Invul + 100% Suppress heal) is nice as well.

[Sotnik]

I did not know shields are not affected by resistances and DR. Thanks for the info.
Shards give a nice bonus to shields.

[McBloed]

At my Powersword Assassin i use the "Personal Void Shield", but only because of the instant suppression refill, so i can ignore suppression restoration and can take dmgstats instead.
So, not totaly useless at this point.
I tried it at Level 86 and +5 with 2 of the "+30% ShieldHP" Shards and 3 "+10ShieldHP at hit" and the "+25% ShieldHP" passive (near 7000ShieldHP in total), no matter what i do, the shield is down latest after 3-5 hits of normal enemys or 1hit of Voidripper with claws or bosshits.
I don´t have to say that i messed up with Dmgstats and passives this way.
So, in Lowlevel i think that Shields are realy great, but at some point they are getting more and more unimportent. So dodge, DR or resistences are more importent at a point.

[DarkFenix]

The problem is the same as any other slightly 'out there' build in this game. You have to use half your build just to reach parity with the vanilla option (ie. health in this case), leaving you far less space to worry about things like damage, dodge, etc.

I mean, what are you getting with shields? You're getting a small quantity of extra health, which doesn't regenerate, has finite charges to refill, and is deeply lacking in passives and perks to support. You have to dig pretty deep to stack up any buffs for them.

My idea:
Shield-type items should give you a passive quantity of shield on top of your health, for free, which regenerates on its own. Active abilities don't give you the shield, but enhance it instead.

Personal void shield's gimmick is a large buffer, so it could have an ability called "overcharge void shield" or somesuch, boosting it to double capacity (but it only recharges on its own back to normal capacity) and filling your suppression bar.

Rosarius doesn't even need to change, it can still make you invulnerable for 5 seconds, and deflector could just forego the extra shielding and just keep the reflect effect, maybe applying some extra damage reduction to your shield hp while it's doing so.

As for passive support, easy, you can put a side-branching passive somewhere in the health tree, that makes flips anything you have boosting health, to instead boost shield. Then a couple of extras in the defence tree and you're golden.

[McBloed]

In my opinion, the easiest way "to make shields great again" :) is, to let them get the modified (-DR -Resist) DMG, and not the unmodified DMG.

Now HP are much more effectiv than Shields.

[StephBx]

I have found a nice relic personal void shield with two sockets. I was mor interrested by its bonus than the shield itself and 2000 HPs is a nice survival bonus in some hot spots.
So I took it to the techpriest to fill those two sockets. I choose a Voltaic and a Voltheinst psalms since one refill the shield with 10HP on hit and the other 50HP on kill.
The cool thing I discovered later is those psalms work even if you haven't activated the shield. Kill one enemy and you instantly have a 60HP shield. destroy a few mines and you gain 60HP per mine. kill a hord and gain 800 to 1200 HP shield. And you can over charge it like this after avtivating it.

[LLeugh]

I prefer grenades or digital weapons the best defense is a good offense