What's the deal with Aegis?

[Thug Killadome]

Am I missing something? Despite being a red, it feels like it's a Topaz Brooch that's totally dependent on items to even be useful. It's great on Engineer for obvious reasons, and alright on Merc since he can pick up orbs from Monster Tooth a lot easier, but it seems almost entirely reliant on leeching seeds/scythes (which are reliant on attack speed/crit chance respectively) to even work. Currently 2 reds require a strong healing build to function, but at least N'kuhana's makes sense since the skulls shred almost everything with high healing--having a couple of brooches gives you a sizable amount of shield by just simply playing the game.

Not saying it's useless, but as a red it feels redundant when it has an easier to acquire substitute with a less item-dependent activation requirement.

[Moschusbock]

even on a shroomed up engi its not great honestly. its a terrible red and the itembalancing in the last patch was atrocious in general. the white items are way too strong, warhorn is ok, aegis is printertrash.

[Jenkem Junkie]

I find it works best when paired with stacks of monster tooth necklaces on Mercenary. I suppose scythes could work better if you theoretically could get his hitrate up. Leeching seed doesn't offer enough health back to be worth it unless you stacked like 10 of them. Only issue with this is like you said it's redundant.

When you pair it with a Rejuvenation Rack, the item becomes quite nice imo. It just sucks that you need a second red (and a specific one at that) or stacks of healing items to make good use of it. Hopefully it becomes more interesting with the addition of more items to the game.

[Boksha]

Topaz Brooch is just pretty broken right now, but even compared to, say, Infusion, Aegis is a bit lackluster. Once you have two or three of them, it's basically a rechargeable extra 100% HP, whereas one Aegis is just a rechargeable extra 20% HP. For most characters, that's barely 3 Infusions at level 30. It feels like Aegis should've gone up to at least 40% of your HP and Topaz Brooch should have a limit of 40 points per stack or something (instead of twice your max HP).

[Weapon Master]

I think the stacking mechanic of allowing 20% more hp stored every stack is terrible. If you have even just 2 or 3 topaz brooches late game, you're bound to be at 70-80% barrier for most of the stage. That means that this is the only red that really doesn't have an effect until you get to 5 stacks.

It should probably just be allowed to charge up to 100%, but the stacking should be changed to be more like the Embrace red:

Store a percentage of excess healing as a decaying barrier up to 100% of your hp, the conversion ratio from heal to barrier is 30% ( +30% per stack )

Then even if the only healing you have is a few leaching seeds and a harvester's scythe, you can stop the natural decay of the shield at least.

[GIRL]

I think Aegis should allow you to either heal Shield (not the Topaz stuff, I mean the blue health bar) or just offer a flat Armor buff.

It's called Aegis. It's a shield. Why not make if just decrease a flat percent of damage or have something to do with shield...? As of right now it's arguably the worst Red item.