Shield Skills and General 0.2 Feedback

Due to work travel and other life events I only got to play a little bit of 0.2 before I had to step away for a while. The past couple weeks I got to return and finish the campaign I have few points of feedback on the primary skills I played which are shield skills (Magma, Resonating, Charge) as well as some general reasons I think 0.2 feels a little meh compared to 0.1.

tldr: still love the overall engaging game-play but shield skills feel a lot weaker and campaign itemization is just in a horrible place, and shield charge is bused with a controller.

1) Shield Charge: targeting with a controller is broken. Regularly when using the skill my character will fly off in the wrong direction or run around the actual target. I did some loose testing and, while not exclusively, I think this happens more when the left stick is in a more neutral position even if you are using the right stick to target. It is worth noting I don't think this problem is exclusive to shield charge while it happens significantly less I saw the same behavior occasionally from sunder.

2) Magma Barrier: is almost not worth using it its current state. In 0.1 it hit hard when you successfully used it but the changes in monster and boss HP made the skill go from worth waiting for the counter play to use to something that you ignore and hope it randomly fires off and provides a little buff. Also, ignites from the skill used to be noticeable in 0.1 now you don't even see the bar move.

3) Resonating Shield: actually feels better this patch. I feel like the skill is doing more damage and plays well with some of the new support gems. In 0.1 I would just use the skill to break armor now it actually feels close to something you could use all of the time.

4) Shield Bash: It is nice you added this but honestly it does nothing. You would have to block and lower your shield like 50 times just to kill a white monster and the other effects are not noticeable.

5) No Stun Bar: (Late edit add) There is no stun bar on the UI but it is a critical mechanic for shield skills. Also I think you can get chain heavy stunned as I had it happen a few times. Make sure there is a delay before the player can be stunned again just like bosses.

6) Usable Shields: felt worse this patch. With HPs increasing and thus shields relying more on having good +armour and %armour rolls there is no ability to use an ok rolled shield because it could mean doing 30% less damage. This is more prominent compared to weapons because shields don't have any secondary offensive stats such as elemental damage that can compensate. I also wish there were unique shield options but none of them have a high enough armor stat to compete with having a 1000+ armour shield.

7) General Shields: This gameplay feels worse compared to 0.1 for two reasons. Mosters and effects are hitting much harder which means that standing or moving slowly near them is just a bad play and is sure to get you killed. Even at 1600 hps I was getting one shot by a number of the rare effects in cruel. Having high armor, block, and active block is just not enough to offset this. Second, the increased HP pools of monsters means that shield skills, which were already on the lower side for damage, take a lot longer to kill things during which you are slowly moving around and taking a lot of damage.

8) Loot Feedback: Loot in 0.2 feels worse than in 0.1. In the campaign I don't think the problem is one of enough loot. I think the problem is that 0.2 added a lot more items and now the loot pool is too large. In 0.1 I would occasionally find a usable blue or yellow, but in 0.2 I don't even see the items I am looking for drop at all. The tiered items in the campaign are nice but none of these were ever an item type I would use, and the only thing that feels worse than dropping an item you don't need is dropping a tiered item you don't need. To follow on, if I wanted to craft I couldn't as I was not finding any exalted orbs, in curel I found 1 in act 4; 2 in act 5; and 4 in act 6. So even if I wanted to craft an item I could not. I thought attribute runes were going to be good but now the rune pool is so large that I only found one resistance rune of the type I needed to fill all slots on my gear with because I did not find anything with cold resistance, this meant I was running around with negative cold resistance for more than a whole act.

9) Overall Gameplay: in 0.2 is still great. I found the acts to be fun and engaging and the little bit of endgame I did felt much better especially doing away with the whole Run X maps thing. There were a lot of little improvements like the show things in an area on hover on the map and convenience drops that were good. The smoothness and the flow and polish around combat does shine and makes it enjoyable.

Overall I think for 0.3 I would ask for a few high priority improvements on existing items.

1) Take a good look at itemization I don't think the problem is more loot, its finding more loot I may want to use. Right now PoE2 by far has the worst loot feel of any ARPG i've played recently.
2) Please for all that is good in the world fix controller targeting bugs especially with shield charge.
3) (Removed it was pointed out where stun bar is)
4) Change shields to get more base damage and less added damage so a greater variety of shields can be used with these skills.

Ohh and maybe figure out how to fix the well in my hideout! :)

+1 good feedback.

I really like vanguard/shield builds in games and PoE2 has a lot of potential to have super fun shield game-play, but it just needs more work to get there.

I have another post talking about shield mechanics too. Basically it just has to do with the lack of consistency of block skills and enemy attacks.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3743266

"

randomstring123#2962 wrote:

5) No Stun Bar: (Late edit add) There is no stun bar on the UI but it is a critical mechanic for shield skills. Also I think you can get chain heavy stunned as I had it happen a few times. Make sure there is a delay before the player can be stunned again just like bosses.

One comment on this point.

I don't play shield skills, much, but there is a Heavy Stun Bar for the controller UI, at least on PC. It's the yellow bar center screen above your skills. On Mouse & Keyboard, it's a harder-to-notice thin bar above your flasks. Monsters have a stun bar under their life bar.


Heavy Stun was increased to 3 seconds (from 1) in Patch 0.2.0.


There were several changes (not intending to be pedantic or detract from any of your points, but I went back to see how much was changed with 0.2.0):

"

Blocking a hit by raising your shield or parrying now gives you a chance to avoid accumulating heavy stun buildup equal to the chance you would otherwise have had to evade the hit.

Unified stun mechanics and terminology between players and monsters. The "stagger" that players suffer when blocking too much damage with their shield raised is now a heavy stun. Players are still unable to be heavy stunned unless a mechanic specifically states otherwise.

Players can no longer be light stunned while their shield is raised.

Players have 50% more Light Stun Threshold per time stunned in past 4 seconds (previously 25% more player Light Stun Threshold per time stunned in past 6 seconds).

Your Heavy Stun bar now doesn't start emptying until the Heavy Stun animation has finished (instead of when the Heavy Stun animation starts).

Heavy Stun duration on players is now 3 seconds (previously 1 second).

Players cannot Block or Evade Hits while they are Heavy Stunned.

Releasing Raise Shield immediately after blocking a skill now performs a Shield Bash that damages and stuns enemies in front of you, and also dazes them if you're using a Tower Shield.

"

I don't play shield skills, much, but there is a Heavy Stun Bar for the controller UI, at least on PC. It's the yellow bar center screen above your skills

LOL I've played over 100 hours of shield skills and i've never noticed that bar there until now. Very helpful.

"

Your Heavy Stun bar now doesn't start emptying until the Heavy Stun animation has finished (instead of when the Heavy Stun animation starts).

This change is what allows the player to be chain stunned. I just did a little testing now that I can see the stun bar. If you get heavy stunned and then raise your shield right after the stun ends, to either defend or use a shield skill, the next hit will cause you to be immediately stunned again. The way it was before meant that you couldn't be chain stunned just like bosses.