The Tavern

Naga's used to be good with shields because they could negate the shield penalty with only 9 / 15 skill for a kite / tower shield. But they've also got an aptitude of -2.

Does anyone know what the situation is now, after the shield change?

Not that I have an answer. In fact, I'm still struggling to understand what the shield change really does. Can someone elucidate here, not just wrt Nagas?

I thought it meant that the shield penalty only went to 0 when you got to Shields 27; and, in return, it no longer applied to to-hit. What that means for equipment choices, I don't know either.

andrew wrote:I thought it meant that the shield penalty only went to 0 when you got to Shields 27; and, in return, it no longer applied to to-hit. What that means for equipment choices, I don't know either.

I actually play a troll of Oka and found a tower shield of reflection. In 0.27 you could eliminate all shield penalty by pushing shields to 15 (= 10 + heroism). Now in 0.28 it seems that my attack speed is significantly reduced by not having enough shields skill, after four runes my shields skill is 14 (= 19 with heroism).

Considering the attack delay my feeling is that this is a nerf to shields in 0.28.

It might be a buff for tower shields for most characters, who'd need 25 skill to remove the penalty anyway.
I've got a DG who's wearing a tower shield with no more trouble than I'd expect. (The character feels really strong.)

But the change makes me rather wary of Trolls, Naga and Ogres with a shield, since their whole gimmick was a low shield aptitude + need less skill.
Also I'm more wary of bucklers.

Now what does all this mean for shields and magic? Do I also have to go up to 27 to remove all interference with the success rate?

I believe yes?

But does anybody has some spoiler about the progress of the shield skill? Is it a buff or a nerf for shields?

Shield skill used to be very weak, because SH was the weakest defense and the skill barely gave any SH anyway. So usually you only trained to remove the penalties. So it is a little surprising to see that now you need to train the skill to 27 to do that.

I guess the devil is in the details: how much of the penalties are removed at low skill levels? (And did they changed the starting penalties?)

That's from an actual chat:

Turgon: Do you already know new shield mechanics? Tower shield will make your firestorm more difficult
Charly: dont know exact mechanics
Charly: but form what Iv noticed
Charly: it make shields more useful early on
Charly: and harder to rid penalties later on
Turgon: yes, I think the same
Charly: works like armour now

From the relative commit:

The new formula is:

2/5 * shield_penalty^2 / (20 - 3 * racial_factor) * (27 - shield_skill) / 27

where shield_penalty is 5 for bucklers, 9 for kite shields, and 13 for tower
shields, and racial_factor is -2 for large species and formicids, 0 for
medium species, 2 for kobolds, and 4 for spriggans.

So large species are still favored in shield-use, albeit unfortunately is not so evident in game as before.
I personally don't have idea in the practice the new formula has similar "returns" for larger race, or their "bonus" is weaker than before.

Also please not there at least another relevant commit that adjust some number for kite and large shield, so again the new version could have a different balance in comparison of the past.

From my very limited experience with normal races, now kite and tower shield are much more usable at lower skills, especially when spell-casting, but they provide lower bonus until getting similar skill level to the past. No idea with UC.

Yes but examining that formula ``2/5 * shield_penalty^2 / (20 - 3 * racial_factor) * (27 - shield_skill) / 27``, if enough skill points have been invested into shields to bring a gargoyle (with a shield aptitude +1) to 25 skill, he can wear a large shield with very little issue. But a Naga with -2 aptitude who's invested the same amount of skill points would only have 20 skill or so (I don't know the precise numbers for skill point costs), and their effective shield penalty would be ``7 / 2 * 20 / 26 = 35 / 13 = 2.7`` times greater.

In the late game the skill aptitude is much more important than the racial_factor with this formula.

The Tavern

Are nagas still good with shields?

Are nagas still good with shields?

Re: Are nagas still good with shields?

Re: Are nagas still good with shields?

Re: Are nagas still good with shields?

Re: Are nagas still good with shields?

Re: Are nagas still good with shields?

Re: Are nagas still good with shields?

Re: Are nagas still good with shields?

Re: Are nagas still good with shields?

Re: Are nagas still good with shields?

Re: Are nagas still good with shields?