Raise Shield, a tale of Extremes
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I've been playing a bit of Magma Barrier with Unwavering Stance (Your Stun Threshold is doubled; Cannot Dodge Roll). Something I've noticed is this playstyle is VERY feast or famine, and not always visually intuitive.
Many enemies, not even just bosses, but like white named basic enemies, either prefer their unblockable slams over their "default" strikes or straight up have no blockable action (some casters and, in my experience, the giant skeletons from act 2 valley of the titans, though those might have a "kick" strike they almost never use it because their other attacks have so much end-lag that they can just alternate between them I think, a few others are also notable culprits like the red cultist demons guys, Carver Stalkers I think they are called). Worse, many of these culprits have "slams" or "AoE" spells that don't glow red, don't particularly telegraph themselves and often look like linear attacks, leaving you, the SHIELDCHAD to be shredded (cause HP builds are massively weaker defensively than ES and Armor is somehow the least tanky defense despite incurring the most movespeed penalties) and have to keep a mental catalogue of all the things that LOOK like strikes or projectiles that you simply can't trust. This means that while facing these enemies, and especially a couple bosses, a build centered around raising your shield manually has it's entire functionality disabled. There is no keystone that lets you clock these attacks for say 75% damage reduction instead of 100%, there is no The Wailing Wall unique for manual blocking (I'm pretty sure the Wailing Wall does not work with Magma Barrier and Raise Shield, though if it does forgive my rash assumption, it's description leads me to believe these would be disabled though), there is no PoE style niche tool to allow this mechanic to function reliably at reduced power. It's all or nothing, baby. And let's be fair and talk about when it DOES work. When properly operating, raise shield makes you essentially immortal...until it doesn't. This is one of the main things that drew me to Unwavering Stance, this tantalizing idea of not having to worry about the little bar above my flasks because my stun threshold was simply too high. Now that it is though, I find that having to refresh magma barrier constantly while animation locked to blocking is frankly tedious. That magma barrier, being strangely the best scaling melee skill in the game with gem levels, might one shot entire packs of enemies and 2 shot bosses, meaning when it works it completely obsoletes the game mechanics. However, the game mechanics that it does make obsolete are...strikes and projectiles. In my experience 70-90% of strikes and projectile used by enemies in PoE2 are harder to get hit by than they are to get missed by. Not to dodge, but to get MISSED BY, just by walking with your shield up many of these enemies will simply swing wide with attacks that wouldn't do enough damage to overcome a single life regen notable even if you weren't blocking. Which is perhaps my greatest disappointment with Raise Shield: all the hits you want to block are unblock-able and all the hits that you can block wont hit you if you just walk forward or to the side a bit with any reasonable amount of movement speed. This means for a magma barrier, shield oriented, frontliner trying to live the dream of leaping in (shield charge doesn't trigger magma barrier despite raising your shield, making leap slam->raise shield the fastest way to have your retaliation ready, but that aside) shield first and seeing your enemies obliterate themselves upon you...you spend most of your time fiddling with white mobs animations desperately trying to get them to hit you in 0.5-0.7 seconds of raising your shield to one-shot them and ignite the pack.... This isn't even to speak on the boss issue, some bosses love their blockables, like The Viper from act 3 or map bosses based on her. She can even get hit by 2 magma barriers in a single attack animation, which is often enough to kill her if you are stacking magma barrier gem levels. Other times you are twiddling your thumbs, half your passive tree borderline useless and walking in circles, waiting for the boss to exhaust all it's slam and AoE CDs and hoping you are positioned well enough to react to it FINALLY using a strike, just to 1 shot the boss with a single block. To me, all this kinda ruins the shield archetype thematically, you feel not much like a fortress weathering a siege of attacks, and more like a paper land mine, drifting uselessly in the breeze (with maybe some totems or a Hammer of the Gods actually killing the boss while you wait) until the boss finally decides to cooperate and hit you with something that functionally interacts with a core game mechanic of shields and one of the selling points of how PoE2 evolved beyond PoE1 (manual Raise Shield). It also further makes any map boss derived from certain Act 1 bosses feel like even more of a joke then they already do, seriously, who dies to Miller, Crowbell or Executioner? They are literally just up-scaled Hillock... Last edited by HonouShugoshin#0642 on Jan 6, 2025, 6:57:56 AM Last bumped on Jan 8, 2025, 4:49:57 AM
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+1
It's insane that manual blocking with Raise Shield and Resonating Shield can't counter AoE damage sources of any kind. I made a post too about how awful block feels. Basically it just says that AoE damage should be block-able with blocking skills, but you take more stun buildup from AoE: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3666984 |
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AoE damage blocking is one of the perks of Turtle Charm, but it happens when your shield is lowered, rather than raised, which makes it mutually exclusive with most of the shield-based attack skills, and does play out very counter-intuitively; when the exploding monster runs up to me, I shouldn't have to lower my shield to have a better chance of surviving.
A smoother implementation would be something like "-35% chance to block. When your shield is raised, you can block unblockable hits using your passive block chance." Last edited by Th3Fall3n0n3#6762 on Jan 4, 2025, 10:11:22 PM
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When i watched the video for poe2, the first thought i had was that raise shield must be the lamest mechanic ever thought of in a game like this.
But boy was i wrong, it feels so good to raise shield instead of clearing out monsters for 2 exalted orb per map. When nerds are running around getting rare items with +light vision and whatnot, you are there raising your shield like a good boy. World could be ending right outside my window, but i would still be there in poe2, raising my shield. |
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They really need to make turtle charm work with shield raised. Not 100% - that would be OP as hell and make you practically invincible (don't stand in poison and watch for river hags though) - just the usual block chance.
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" The problem with Raise Shield being reliant on Turtle Charm is that only Warbringer would be viable with shield skills. That would be too limiting. However, if Turtle Charm was made a Keystone instead of an ascendancy then it would be alright. Last edited by LVSviral#3689 on Jan 4, 2025, 10:30:26 PM
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" I don't see a problem here tbh. Every ascendancy needs something special only they can do. I mean i played with shield skills as they currently are, and surely it's off-meta and not very efficient but still. I also run magma barrier and resonating shield on my titan slammer currently and it helps a ton when i'm too overwhelmed. If it was made into a keystone, we'd have another giant's blood, it's just too powerful to not take, even if you don't use shield skills at all. Last edited by LaiTash#6276 on Jan 4, 2025, 11:15:55 PM
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" Ascendancies being unique is definitely ideal. I don't think skills being too reliant on them is a good thing for build diversity though. Not everything needs to be meta, but it should at least be reliable. Giant's blood is only mandatory because 1 handed weapons don't do enough damage to be a comparable choice right now unfortunately. Turtle Charm is basically just the Acrobatics Keystone, but for block instead of evasion. I don't see an issue of it being a keystone too. If it was a Keystone instead of an Ascendancy the downside might need to reduce block chance more though. Honestly, I would prefer Raise Shield to not require anything and just block AoE damage by default, even if it had to be weaker in some other way. |
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I've personally been having a lot of fun with raise shield, and shield based attacks on my Warrior, however, the unblockable attacks & spells, some of which are just... Random as heck? Balbala's dagger attacks technically got blocked IIRC, it procced my Magma barrier, but still did damage?
I think it sorely needs the ability to block unblockable attacks though, in some way or another, cause it's just not fun losing out on your damage, gameplay and so on, because that one random caster mob's projectile is unblockable while others aren't. Also, if you invest a lot into magma barrier, a ton of bosses just become mega chores. I think they could balance a keystone around allowing blockable attacks with either of these downsides, or a combination of some them: - Must be a "Perfect Block" Like a parry. - Causes high stun/stagger build up. - Reduces global defences by X for Y seconds (Armor/posture break theme?) - Reduced Block chance (The Passive kind.) It needs something. The playstyle is super fun if you're into that type, it's not "Passive, auto kill trigger" like triggers in PoE 1 was. It requires timing, enemy knowledge, and does not cause giant screen wipes. Why can we not have our slower, but lumbering, unstoppable Juggernaut style? |
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