Improve Large Shields

[sanka]

Replying to eeviac's post in the advice section, but I rather created a new thread instead here.

If experienced players thinks that shields are almost always do not worth the investment, or only a few levels, maybe we should suggest to change them somehow instead of simply tell every newbie to not use them.

I think that bucklers and even normal shields are fine now. You may switch to two handed weapons later, but they work well enough early/mid game.

Large shields are however very weak, and this also means you won't have a carrier path where you will upgrade to as a shield user, so most likely you will upgrade to a twohander, and then you won't have any use for your shields skill (unless TSO or the spell, but this is not enough.) So buffing large shields would help a lot.

Large shields provides good SH value, but it's not enough that late in the game for that much XP. So I think that large shields always should generate with an ego, and more large shield artefacts should generate. There isn't too much large shields generated in a game, so I think that always adding some ego is fine: the one with protection or a useless resist is still not good enough to invest in shields.

Maybe we should give them special ego types (as rare as the normal ones now or maybe rarer) - to differentiate them and make early finders consider investing in shields. Ideas:

- triple resist (rF+++ or something)
- permanent deflect missiles
- damage shaving like the deep dwarf
- every attack (even torment and hellfire) have X% chance to miss
- retailate attack with the shield (like minotaur headbutt: if you block a melee attack, you get an attack with your shield, somehow depending on your shields skill). Maybe this one is too similar to reflection.
- blocking for adjacent friends/sumons/slaves also
- decreasing LOS
- "inteligent shield": block even if paralysed etc.
- some egos from other slots: conservation, resist mutation, warding
- if you rest, double your SH for that turn.

Potential problem: large races. Maybe raise the requirement for Naga and Centaur.

Also, I think that enchanter staves should be twohanded, and unarmed combat be slower with shields (not removable with shield skill). Otherwise they should be comparable to one handed weapons in overall power. If they remain the same, then large shields are hard to buff.

Of course the numbers should be adjusted, but which one of those would make you think in investing in large shields?

[eeviac]

If enhancer staves were two handed, spriggans wouldn't be able to use them.

I'm wary of nerfing UC. There's a few good reasons why it's so strong:
1. You can't enchant your fists, or have egos
2. Min delay doesn't come until 27 skill
3. To get damage comparable with other weapons, you have to spend a lot of extra xp getting tmuts online


Getting some egos from other slots sounds interesting.

[sanka]

If enhancer staves were two handed, spriggans wouldn't be able to use them.

I thought that simply make them twohanded for every species - special. A little bit like lajatang (I know that lajatang simply have half damage or something with a shield, but it does not work with the magic staves, and the doublehanded category makes no sense currently anyway.).

I'm wary of nerfing UC.

It would only nerf UC with shields, maybe only UC with large shields to keep the status quo mostly (you said you wouldn't use one even on a troll...). So decrease speed a little, and make the decrease impossible to negate with skill on large shields (but possible on smaller ones).

I feel that this is important: if a large shield would be an acceptable alternative for twohanders, then they will be nobrainers for trolls. Maybe that's not such a big problem tough.

[Tiber]

Triple resist is too much, but double resist might be something. A fixedart dragon hide shield with rF++ and rC- might be interesting as well. Similarly, warding could work, but conservation and rMut would be too strong except for a fixedart. Giving large shields innate protection brand (+3 AC) might work for a small buff too.

[pubby]

Remove rF/rC from bucklers.

Add rElec+rAcid together as a small/medium/large shield ego- "shield of grounding" or something stupid.

Remove cloak of preservation and turn it into a medium/large shield ego.

Add partial rHellfire as large shield ego.

Allow shields of life protection to block smite attacks dependent on SH.

Scale the protection ego bonus to the type of shield. 3/5/10 for small/medium/large.

[jejorda2]

For large shields, change the penalty that is currently based on the number of attacks per turn to only apply to attacks from radically different directions. The shield is big enough that it doesn't have to move to block the two guys standing beside each other or the second arrow from the same bow.

[crate]

UC is not necessarily better than one-handed weapons as-is by the way. UC 27 is better than any one-handed weapon at skill 27, but UC is really awful at skill 0 and stays bad for a while until it scales up: it has the largest xp requirement by far of all the one-handed weapons.

It also already has an unremovable attack delay increase (0.05) from using a shield.

[Tenaya]

Replying to eeviac's post in the advice section, but I rather created a new thread instead here.

If experienced players thinks that shields are almost always do not worth the investment, or only a few levels, maybe we should suggest to change them somehow instead of simply tell every newbie to not use them.

Large shields are however very weak, and this also means you won't have a carrier path where you will upgrade to as a shield user, so most likely you will upgrade to a twohander, and then you won't have any use for your shields skill (unless TSO or the spell, but this is not enough.) So buffing large shields would help a lot.

Large shields provides good SH value, but it's not enough that late in the game for that much XP.

Is this assessment of shields accurate? I have seen this conversation on ##crawl, but it has not been my experience at all. I just looked and all (except Fe) of my 0.10 and 0.11 wins have used a shield. Of course, I have a lot more losses than wins, but I have found shields to be very effective at defense and a surmountable obstacle to offense. Maybe my opinion is based more on 3 or 4 rune victories rather than the extended endgame. In particular, I have enjoyed the reflection brand and sending back crystal spears and iron shots.

[KoboldLord]

Large shields already offer impressive defense. ~50SH will pretty much stop one attack per turn cold, no questions asked, and SH does work on many threatening attacks all throughout the game.

The problem is that 25 skill is a crazy-high investment that can't reasonably be justified as a priority investment no matter what benefits large shields provide. For roughly the same investment in xp, you could get an executioner's axe or triple sword of holy wrath to minimum delay. For roughly the same investment in xp and a couple sources of wizardry, you can get Fire or Ice Storm online.

5 skill is cheap by the time you get to Lair, and 15 skill is cheap by the time you've got three Runes. Cheap expenditures are justifiable, if they pay off enough. 25 skill is never cheap, so if you upgrade it'll be around your 12th Rune when there's really nothing better to spend xp on.

It's a more complicated solution, but I'm betting the best way to bring large shields into line with the lesser shields is to make shields skill use a stepdown function to determine how much of your penalty you've paid off. You get a lot of penalty paid off quickly, but then you have some diminishing returns, possibly never eliminating the penalty completely. So you can have that 50SH you want, but you have to suck up a moderate casting penalty that you might have to buy off with wizardry or something.

Alternately, large shields could just be removed. Monsters whose gimmick involve being jerks with ridiculous SH are mostly holy monsters, so they could just get better SH from a normal shield than the player can and we can handwave it as an active invocation.

[mikee]

Suggestion: lower the displayed SH value (ala 0.5 and lower) so people don't see a number like 50 or 60 and assume that means awesomeness.

[varsovie]

From what it seems, players prefer two-handed over shield because killing fast is a better defence than some SH, and the fact that some late game threats cannot be blocked.

So instead of buffing shield's defense value and making the dps vs sh choice even harder, why not gives some offensive value (passive or active special attack) or a special defense (new egos).

For bonus attack, you can add 5+(1%*shield skills/2) chance to stun foo. Or add an active skill that allow you to bash one enemy (cost, food, breath-like countdown with reduced sh and ev, %chance to push the enemy one tile away)

As for defense bonus, sanka's suggestion of some "special" ego can do the job. We could also give a sh bonus according to the number of adjacent walls, but while logic (less space to defend, so much more % covered by the shield), I fear it can lead to even more corridor/corner fights.

And +1 for nerfing UC combat a little with shield because now it's kind of a no-brainer.

[crate]

And +1 for nerfing UC combat a little with shield because now it's kind of a no-brainer.

This is actually incorrect in both possible meanings.

I already covered why UC is not always the best one-handed weapon in the game.

The other possible sense, that using a shield is obviously the right thing to do if you are using UC, is also not necessarily true. It should be obvious why this is the case for larger-than-buckler shields (more xp investment when your weapon already demands so much). For bucklers, a combination of the extra attack delay and the fact that especially low-dex characters don't get much SH from a buckler means that for some, Ghouls in particular, it is perhaps worse to have a buckler equipped than to not have it equipped (and in addition you save some xp you can put elsewhere, though this is small for a buckler). For characters using transmutations shields are also often a waste since you just plain won't have it equipped much of the time.

For pretty much every other one-handed weapon you would want to use a buckler though, since with just a small amount of skill there are no offensive penalties.

[sanka]

The problem is that 25 skill is a crazy-high investment that can't reasonably be justified as a priority investment no matter what benefits large shields provide.

I do not really understand why lowering the XP requirement is a better solution than buffing large shields to justify it. I see it is a problem that many times your skills have very small use after the early (and cheap) levels: I would rather create options that at least somewhat give you real benefits for improving them.

I think they can be buffed even to the point where they would be the new nobrainer: imagine every large shields gives the wearer DD like damage shaving (DD level->skill level). Maybe a good middle ground can be achieved: where the XP investment worths it, but it's not better (maybe slightly still weaker) than investing in twohanded weapons.

Just to make it clear: I think large shields should not be really usable with low (<<20) skill level, but they should give big benefits if you do invest in the skill.

The hard parts with this balance change:
1. Attacks where a shield (buckler) is almost a nobrainer now: Magical staves, UC, and stabbing. They may be fine anyway, since 25 skill level is still huge. If necesary for one of these, we can nerf them with large shields: increase the delay for UC slightly with large shields, give noticable penalty to stealth (not removable by skill), or make staves twohanded for everyone, not usable with shield at all.
2. Large races. Currently they only need 15 skill to negate penalties, which is much much less XP. If this is a problem, consider making naga and centaur being "normal size" regarding shields. Trolls and Ogres with UC and giant spiked club will have a good choice anyway. Or raise the skill requirement for large races, maybe to 20.

[mikee]

1. Attacks where a shield (buckler) is almost a nobrainer now: Magical staves, UC, and stabbing. They may be fine anyway, since 25 skill level is still huge. If necesary for one of these, we can nerf them with large shields: increase the delay for UC slightly with large shields, give noticable penalty to stealth (not removable by skill), or make staves twohanded for everyone, not usable with shield at all.

I see this term, nobrainer, used a lot. I can't figure out exactly what it means (maybe I am bad with this slang). In this context, does using a shield/buckler in those cases not require decision making, thus it is a nobrainer? i.e., everyone should do this without thinking about it? If so, I do not think that is the case for UC and enhancer staves. About UC, please see crate's several posts in this thread in which he explains UC and shields. Enhancer staves have a better chance for not requiring decision making, but even then it is not so black and white. Let's say you're using a staff of fire as a weapon; you also have some fire spells. You've also found a nice lajatang you'd like to swap to in case you run into hell knights/fire giants/whatever. Is using a shield still a non-decision? What if you also have a nice longbow you'd like to use? What if...?

I think that maybe every choice can benefit from some brain use.

[XuaXua]

nobrainer; it means there is no choice necessary, the answer is either a concrete yes or no.

[sanka]

I trust crate and mikee about using a buckler/shield with UC and staves are not always optimal. But this just gives more argument to my proposal to buff large shields I think: in the eyes of good players shields are even weaker than I would think. Nerfing any combination with buffed large shields may be unnecessary. I just wanted to avoid the situation where the large shields are overbuffed for some builds.

Also, not being a native (or even good) speaker my expression vocabulary is quite limited: I tend to use those that are used the most. I only hope I catch the tone and the correct meaning.

[KoboldLord]

I see this term, nobrainer, used a lot. I can't figure out exactly what it means (maybe I am bad with this slang).

It's usually one of the first spaces filled when I start a new Crawl Tavern Bingo card. It has occasional rhetorical value, but it's so badly overused and misused that I've started to tune out whomever uses it.

It's pretty bad in this case. Using a shield when you've made the choice to use a weapon that is paired with a shield is a consequence, not an additional choice.

[sanka]

Using a shield when you've made the choice to use a weapon that is paired with a shield is a consequence, not an additional choice.

With magical staves it sounds true, but stabbing and UC intuitively does not imply shield usage to me.

IRL you won't carry a shield when you try to stab someone, and I guess few unarmed combatants use shields either, except maybe Captain America if I remember correctly.

I remeber that when I was even more a newbie, I never used shields with UC or stabbing because I tought it implies big penalties.

They may be "paired with a shield" in this game (which is not the case as crate and mikee pointed out), but this is really not intuitive so it looks like a choice. I did not talked about normal one handed weapons (where your statement seems to be true), because I'd like to buff large shields primarily for them.

Anyway, the main original idea was to buff large shields, not to debate about shields with UC and staves and stabbing. I have just thinked too much in the future: if buffing large shield is generaly good (for one handed weapons), will it cause balance issues in other places? I think not, and if it will, they can be fixed easily.

[palin]

I also would buff shields but introduce a strenght limit, so casters would have to do a meaningful choice. A shield is heavy, try for yourself.

[sanka]

I do not think that strength limit works that well in this game - I don't really like this on armours.

There's the choice that if you wan't to spend xp on shields skill or something else. Shields give penalty on spell success.

[XuaXua]

I see this term, nobrainer, used a lot. I can't figure out exactly what it means (maybe I am bad with this slang).

It's usually one of the first spaces filled when I start a new Crawl Tavern Bingo card. It has occasional rhetorical value, but it's so badly overused and misused that I've started to tune out whomever uses it.

It's pretty bad in this case. Using a shield when you've made the choice to use a weapon that is paired with a shield is a consequence, not an additional choice.

The guy is complaining having a hard time with obtuse terminology and what the hell did you go and do then?

[galehar]

The guy is complaining having a hard time with obtuse terminology and what the hell did you go and do then?

Write proper english with words that actually exists? I don't think the tavern rules allow such a thing.

[tasonir]

I find large shields quite useful, but they are very narrowly applicable to most builds. You really want to be a large race, so that you only have to get 15 shields, and probably be using unarmed. I suppose you could use demon 1h's, or be non-melee also. But Nagas and trolls....that's about it. I suppose you could make an ogre monk, but really, use maces. Maaayyybeee centaurs.

No one else really benefits from large shields...I'd like to see them buffed, but then you make large races considerably stronger as well.