Will anyone be using a shield?

[lorieninfl]

I'm curious if anyone is going to wander around with a shield? The DPS loss would be rather massive it seems and with no active/passive abilities to turn your shield into a weapon; they almost seem pointless unless you are going for a pure survivability build.

[galzohar]

It all depends on how they balance it in the end. With the currently available info I am not impressed with shields at all, however there is very little info and even that little info is subject to change. In the end I'm sure they want to make shields attractive and thus I will seriously consider them when the time comes. But yes, with current data they are not impressive at all.

[Bowzer]

Something about Barbarians and shields just doesn't work for me. My philosophy for using a barb is going to be kill things fast so they don't kill me.

[shoko]

Yes i will create a Barb for tanking

Build will be something like this one, all fury gens/spenders are not 100% sure atm.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...UhQ!bVe!abbbcY

[Decimus]

I'm curious if anyone is going to wander around with a shield? The DPS loss would be rather massive it seems and with no active/passive abilities to turn your shield into a weapon; they almost seem pointless unless you are going for a pure survivability build.

I understand that if one has no knowledge of how D3 melee works this is the assumption, however; let me enlighten you. You are likely to, as you level up first and foremost, be doing MORE damage if you drop your offhand and go without any offhand at all (or use a shield).

This is because of how D3 treats mainhand and offhand swingtimers. In d3, mainhand and offhand does not hit independently, they queue eachother. What that means is that when dual-wielding you're not getting alot of extra hits, in fact if dual-wielding hadn't had a hidden 15% ias bonus the difference would have been in this no-stat scenario absolutely zero.


So when is it going to be a damage loss to be dw-ing? It's when you find a good weapon upgrade, and only one of them. If the upgrade is big enough, it is a damage loss to have this awesome upgrade be queued behind a bad offhand, since dual-wielding essentially makes the swingtimer its own (swingtimer + the offhand one)*15% extra ias from dw bonus. And this is no theoretical scenario mind you, I have had this happen to me on several beta playthroughs.


HOWEVER, why wouldn't we then all be using shields if dual-wielding is redundant? This is because in comparison to d2, shields offer way less protection. They now have a block amount rather than completely negating the damage, and it would appear it is harder to reach high numbers of %block. Basically it all comes down to style. Dual-wielding/2handing equals slightly more damage and slightly less defense when compared to shields. In the end you will be pulling respectable numbers whether you want to use a shield or not.


It all comes down to the style you prefer.


Oh, and if you don't understand what I mean by queueing eachother, find any Barbarian playthrough and you'll see how the Barb only swings with one weapon at a time (of course).

[galzohar]

If you don't have 2 good weapons for dual wield, you can always just find one 2-handed weapon. Unless they drop more rarely, they'll be just as easy to get as a single good 1-handed weapon.

You also need to remember that finding a good shield will probably be almost as difficult as finding a good offhand (assuming drop rates are equal, otherwise this too can differ greatly of course).

[Scorch Hellfire]

I could see a WD using a shield if they are using the closer ranged spells without dogs...

[ElementEight]

Am I alone to find this whole lower-dps-than-not-while-dual-weilding silly? I assume that only your mainhand weapon's damage (and both weapon's stats of course) is being used when calculating skill damage? Does the (likely) increased speed of one handed weapons and the associated resource consumption make up for their lower damage?

What I suppose I may agree with is how two-handed and one-handed damage is now much closer. But, I fear, dual-weilding may be almost worthless (who uses autoattacks?!) if shields have anywhere near their amount of statistics.

[StrikexForce]

I dont see the point of using a shield unless its Hardcore.

[Decimus]

Am I alone to find this whole lower-dps-than-not-while-dual-weilding silly? I assume that only your mainhand weapon's damage (and both weapon's stats of course) is being used when calculating skill damage? Does the (likely) increased speed of one handed weapons and the associated resource consumption make up for their lower damage?

What I suppose I may agree with is how two-handed and one-handed damage is now much closer. But, I fear, dual-weilding may be almost worthless (who uses autoattacks?!) if shields have anywhere near their amount of statistics.

What is so silly about it? Stats from the offhand is used in almost all cases (aside from the stats improving the offhand weapon such as elemental procs and %damage), but it doesn't matter in this case. Increases in min/max damage is extremely powerful. I don't know if you have played the beta, but items with min-max on them is by far the best way to increase your damage (at lower levels at least). The result of this becomes that whenever you find a weapon with a better damage range, you should simply just try to unequip your offhand and check your damage output.

In this following scenario we'll be ignoring 15% dual wield ias. Let's say you have two weapons with 10 damage range and 2 seconds swing timer. The actual swingtimer for weapon 1 is 2 seconds (it's own) + the offhand (2 seconds), which means w1 has an actual 4 seconds swingtimer when dual-wielding. Same goes for weapon 2.

Then you find an upgrade that has 20 damage and 2 seconds swingtimer. When you equip this weapon, the dps will increase, obviously. However, because in this case we're dual wielding, the actual swingtimer of this weapon becomes 4 seconds as well, since it has to queue behind the other weapon as well. As such, in this no stat, no dw ias scenario the increase only becomes 50 % (from 5 dps to 7,5 dps).

Now, we unequip the offhand, and the mainhand is now decreased to a 2s swingtimer again. That means the dps becomes 10 dps instead of 7,5.

The offhand does sometimes provide offensive stats, however I'm pretty sure shields can as well. The only real thing to keep in mind is the 15% ias. That's arguably the only thing that makes dual wield any better than 1x 1hander (whether you use a shield or not).



Oh, and there are no auto-attacks in D3. Anything still unclear? I don't mind explaining this, because I'm 100% certain that the majority of Barbarian's leveling will miss this opportunity to increase their damage output, especially while leveling (where finding good upgrades is most common, naturally).

I dont see the point of using a shield unless its Hardcore.

The point is to maximize the damage output at all times. I can't say I care if that's one of your concerns or not, I'm just giving you a heads up that whenever (if you're using 1handers and dual wields) you get a weapon upgrade, you should try unequip your offhand.