Tree of Savior Forum

New shield attribute/shield art for blue (aka defensive) classes Paladin,Peltasta,Quarrel Shooter and Cryomancer

Please add an attribute/art for Paladin, Quarrel Shooter, Cryomancer and Peltasta that, when a shield is equipped, converts 30% of the shields physical defense value into physical attack and 30% of the shields magic defense value into magic attack, so the classes can use a shield and still deal damage.
By converting I mean that the value is subtracted from the defense value and added to the attack value.

Please make sure that Paladin Vaivora and Peltasta vaivora will be one hand mace (for Paladin) and one hand sword (for Peltasta) so they can be used with this new shield attribute/art.

Thank you very much :slight_smile:

Hello @Kisaragi,

We’ll be sure to forward your suggestions to the development team for further review. Thank you.

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I disagree. If using the shield provides the same advantages of a subweapon in addition of the shield defense - even if only in part - then there would be no point in using a dagger for the classes that can do so.
It’s one thing having some skills using part of the shield defense for attack, but applying it in a general sense wouldn’t make sense. They’re defensive classes - they aren’t supposed to have the same offensive capabilities of other classes to begin with.

there are classes that use daggers just like shields (Retiarius & Fencer), allowing them to block while boosting their attack, so why would you be against the other way around? You’re being illogical here.
Defensive classes have usually bad combat capabilities, so having a shield enabling them to deal normal damage opens them up to offensive builds. This game is all about dealing damage and killing enemies, so all classes should be able to do this,
and to enable this defensive classes need to be able to have the same combat capabilities with one hand + shield as people using two hand + trinket.

They aren’t. Look at the skills they have and their skill factors, they are radically lower than the usual offensive class, meaning you have less damage simply by the fact that you have no or close to no offensive buffs and not as many/ as potent damage skills.

Just having the same base attack value doesn’t turn a defensive class into an offensive class. All my suggestion does is preventing you from destroying your complete build by adding a defensive class and carry a shield,because your attack value is ± the same regardless of using a two hand weapon or one hand weapon + shield.

Fencers’ block effects are halved (dunno about the retiarius to be honest) and they don’t get any defense from the subweapon, whereas you want the full offensive effect while retaining almost all the shield defense. You’re the one being illogical here.

And with your suggestion nothing would prevent someone from getting, let’s say, peltasta + offensive classes, thus having higher defensive capabilities, high base attack and offensive skills to use that attack properly.
There is a reason why the offensive shield-to-atk effect you mention is directly applied to the skills right now - it’s to avoid people doing as i described above.

That’s exactly what the suggestion is aimed at. It wants to include defensive classes into all build options, not only tank/support/control builds.
You already pay a high price in damage capabilities by going for a defensive class, so why would you have to be punished even more by having even less damage by the lower attack value of using a one hand weapon + a shield?

It is reality that all the strong vaivoras are two hand weapons, which would be unusable unless you always switch between one hand + shield and two-hand + trinket, and even then you have 2x investment for two T10 +16 or higher weapon sets.
That’s why you don’t have full offensive effects, not even by a long shot. You have to abandon offensive vaivoras, you give up on a lot of damage skills, and you have absolutely no advantage over a non-shield user if you aren’t damaged.

This is what you completely ignore. In a party of 5, how high is the chance that you will get hit as many times as it takes to gain an actual advantage over using a two hand weapon + trinket?
Unless you take all the threat (which might be able with Peltasta,but not guaranteed because the lack of damage) it’s possible to avoid a lot of damage by positioning alone.

The actual advantage of a defensive class is that they can reduce the damage they take.
However, most reduction comes from enchants,set effects,cards and general armor defense,which all classes have access to,meaning the actual value of a defensive class is low (if they were required to survive on all contents, we’d not see any builds without them,but it’s actually the opposite, only few builds contain them because they are not needed but a drag down).

All an attack equalization does is enable the players to make a choice which type of play they want.
The differences should be by build, not by weapon choice.

You argue mostly on the example of Peltasta, which would be easy to balance accordingly. The shield build is only available in the Swordsman tree alone and has access to all these “balancing measures” that involve shield attacks. Switching around classes to other trees is not a panacea either, looking at how long it took IMC to fix Bokor into being “useful” in the Wizard tree.

It’s better to take this step once, then change the Peltasta line shield build and have a decent working system of defensive classes along all class trees (maybe they can introduce some new shield Scout,too, or change Thaumaturge to allow equipping a shield instead of a sword).

They get 30% more damage for 3 seconds after blocking,though, so they have an offensive pay-off for that.
I’m all for additional effects like that to distinguish between dagger and shield, I just want the shield to have some space in the actual game aside of the shield build and support/healer Clerics that don’t deal any damage and thus are bad characters to main.
Since attack is the most important stat in the game because of the unworldly defense of endgame monsters and the logarithmic damage formula, you cannot compromise on that.

Shield swordsman already has shield scaling on almost all of their skills, but Paladin could use a mace attribute similar to cryomancers current one (15% of shield defense).
Admittedly, Paladins damage skills are total garbage, so it having as much attack with a shield wouldn’t be a problem, but it could be taken advantage of by for example Chaplain, which already wants to use a shield, and is more than fine already.
They also added a new one for Quarrel shooter, i believe is similar to cryomancer, so i believe the 15% value is what IMC wants to go forward with for classes that have defensive nature, but also could use some attack.

https://tos-ktest.neet.tv/attributes/203031

That one only applies to Subzero shield and trades away the damage reduction effect of the skill for a subpar attack boost. This is how you destroy defensive classes, not how you enable them.
For Paladin it would be akin to change Stone Skins effect to 15% physical attack conversion from shield and removing all other effects.

Maybe they can make it something reasonable like 20% without the downsides of losing all the effects,since 15% is not even as much as the trinket of the same refinement rate adds.

I still believe trinkets were a mistake from the beginning since shield/onehanded and two-handed were quite balanced before. But oh well, 1 year since ep12.

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Because the defensive buffs and increased defensive stats are then used by the whole build, that’s why. And once you’ve buffed the base stats, they’re buffed for the whole char. But while that class may have subpar offensive skills, the others in the build aren’t necessarily the same.

So what would happen with the offensive base buff you suggest is that you just buff up, use defensive buffs where applicable, use the defensive class attack skills as filler, use the offensive classes skills for the main rotation. Thus you get the best of both worlds…and i can’t see how that would supposed to be considered balanced to start with.

Beside, while you demean the defensive buff given by the shield, the defense/mdef given by one is equivalent to a bit more of top and bottom armors put together, thus not a negligible amount at all.
And since all those reductions are multipliers of the base damage you get - the result of the atk/def logarithmic part of the formula - it takes just more advantage of the enchant reductions you mention. On the opposite, if you then take so few damage, you could discard them and go for other useful enchants (like accuracy or block penetration) that offensive classes usually can’t afford to get. As you can’t dps while dead.
And while it’s peltasta that would get the major buffs with the changes you suggest - due to the shield-related buffs provided by the class - the other classes would still be in a similar conundrum.
If they are strictly one-handed classes, like crossbow classes, they can even have both the vaivora on the main hand and the shield, so there would be no reason to use a subweapon for the added offense (as the shield gives the same attack, and then more defense on top).
They have been compartimentalizing builds by weapons (and elements in wizards’ case) to avoid similar things happening to begin with. And having that def-to-atk bonus applied to skills rather than generally is made for that exact purposes - so that you can have an increased base attack on skills balanced in the context of a defensive class. And nowhere else. Making it a generalized bonus would directly go against that.

So, in short, your suggestion wouldn’t open up anything - it would just make the class with that attribute as meta, and if already in use, the use of shield as the obviously better choice, at the detriment of everything else.

But to actually make use of that they have to invest heavily in the block stat, since you have to constantly block to keep that up, thus to the discredit of some other stats as the class doesn’t provide any block bonus by itself.
It doesn’t come for free and neither it ends up being a better alternative defense-wise than just using a shield (albeit epee garde kinda makes that non-applicable already). That’s where they differ from your suggestion.

And what you want can’t just be properly done with this game. Having a shield here is mostly about the defense stats and defensive buffs - things that are then applied to the whole build. It would be different if it was only about defending actively - just like offensive skills work - as then the defensive effects would be limited strictly on the use of the defensive class skills. But it doesn’t work like that. And trying to do so would just mess the balance further.
Compartmentalizing classes and giving a separate route is the best they can do, as they can balance things directly for the shield builds in that case. But not being offensively strong it’s intended. Since that is not what you’re meant to do, as that role already belongs to offensive classes.

wouldnt that defeat the purpose of this “aka defensive” classes and the shield equipment itself?

I mean, you wouldnt pick a tank class if you want to do damage right?

Subzero Shield already do something like it. And Provoke passive already grants bonus damage to Swordsmen Shield Classes. So no point to grant such buff to those classes. Blue Classes aren’t not supposed to deal high damage such as Red Classes, their role are to control/tank. People need to compreehend those concept differences.

ask that IMC. They make content that only favors high damage via high attack values. Tanking damage does not help you in any way to complete raids. That’s why there is a need to balance the attack value so you do not take even longer by choosing a defensive class.

The defensive category has nearly no purpose, as well as the equipment called “shield”. The only classes that actually use a shield actively (the three shield swordsmen) are heavily reimbursed for it via all kinds of mechanics while leaving the shield option in the dirt for everyone else that wants to deal any sort of damage.
A shield should not punish the one investing into it. But currently it does, because support classes usually have the better protective tools for party protection, leaving the defensive classes in an odd situation where they have neither damage nor decent support, which is why the shield is dead.

If the defensive classes made it possible to have a decent amount of defense and attack, they could be a bridge between support and damage classes.

actually it would be logical to expect exactly that, that a defensive class would enable you to deal on average more damage because it would allow you more mistakes and elongated windows of attacking.
Instead what it does is that you take just a little less damage, deal a lot less damage and it makes you incompatible with a lot of equipment.

They already do not if you look at their buffs (defensive) and attack skills (few and/or low in skill factor compared to offensive classes). What is important here and what most people seem to have completely forgotten is the premise of this suggestion.

All I asked for is to convert some defense into attack so you don’t have such a large attack discrepancy.

The logarithmic damage calculation makes it so that you can deal 20-30% more damage with a measly 3000 attack more than another character, which is why classes like Wugushi and Barbarian were so broken for their attributes/arts.
If we look at endgame gear, it’s easy to see that at the current rate there is a 5000 attack gap between weapon + shield and weapon+trinket.

In contrast to the sole class choice, this will affect all classes in the build, dealing significantly less damage just because you chose a single blue class and equipped a shield.

How much? let’s take a look:

Let’s say we have a normal +16 T10 equip, setting us at ~ 39k attack with 2hand + trinket.
The same equip would translate into 34k with 1hand and shield.

The enemy is glacia (hard) with an averaged value of ~393.000 defense (averaged between 378k mdef and 408k pdef).
The damage formula is the following: damage = (% increase factor) x attack x min {1, log10 ((attack / (defense + 1))^0.8 + 1)} + (+ increase)

So in case 1 (2hand + trinket) it is: damage = (% increase factor) x 39000 x min {1, log10 ((39000 / (393001)^0.8 + 1)} + (+ increase) = (% increase factor) x 2478 + (+ increase)

In case 2 (1 hand + shield) it is:
damage = (% increase factor) x 34000 x min {1, log10 ((34000 / 393001)^0.8 + 1)} + (+ increase) = (% increase factor) x 1950 + (+ increase).

with 5000 attack difference it’s 27%, with +21 equip you come close to 6k difference, which is over 31% more damage for all three classes, compared to the build option with weapon+ shield.

This means you punish the whole build by doing collectively less damage with all skills on top of having less offensive skills and buffs available by having a single defensive class in the build, trying to get the best out of it.

Now here is the question,though: If you deal less damage, you take longer to kill, so won’t the damage you receive less be nullified by providing the enemy more time to damage you?
What is the benefit in the end? That you have to spend more time of your life whacking on a dumb mob just for it to die?
You rank lower than pure offensive builds, you might even get punished in CM if you deal not enough damage compared to your party members by receiving less silver.

The least that can be done is to compensate a little on the attack side by converting a portion of the shields defense into attack so that you do not stand back behind support/hybrid class builds that also use a shield with exactly the same downsides.

The goal for attack should be like this : Offensive class (2 hand weapon) > defensive class ( 1 hand weapon + shield) > support class (1 hand weapon + shield),
With attack classes having the most attack in their setup, followed by defensive classes featuring a sensible middle ground with a defense conversion into attack from the shield and,last but not least, followed by the support classes that have no attack compensation for carrying a shield.

The sweet spot, considering +21 weapons achievable and +16 weapons the norm for endgame, would be between 17% and 20% defense conversation rate, putting defensive classes exactly in the middle between two hand weapons and one hand weapons and shield without conversion.

Tank classes were make to dont reach the same damage as other classes but really, it’s not because the base damage (your attack as stat, that its what you @Kisaragi want to improve with this art/attribute), its because the skills. The skills from this classes doesnt deal too much hits, while DPS classes deal from 4 to 25 or more hits with a lot of skills.

Its because of that, that tank classes generally have high skills factors with low hits (easier to reach the cap damage but capped anyway by the number of hits).

What i want to explain with this, is that have better attack base stat wont be as usefull as you probably think (in my opinion). Anyway, tank classes are based on tank or support applying debuffs to enemies to help the rest of the team (not on DPS).

Moreover, i have to say that i’m disagree with this suggestion but agree with the idea about make attributes/arts to give them the posibility to change their roll (like what they did with heal attribute but on this clases. For example: they made 2 attributes for “liberate” skill from swordman, they could do something similar with high guard from peltasta reversing the effects with an attribute (lose critical resistance and block and increase the final damage (it should be “increase critical rate and evasion”, but tank equipment builds should not have critical rate and evasion so… i think that they should increase the raw damage. Another option to do this could be increase still more the damage from shield skills based on the defense from shield (this could be able from reversing “hard shield” effects, loosing all the defense from the shield and increasing the damage based on part of the defense lost (its like what they did with the “healing” stat on “heal” attribute factor, making them able to swap their roll without need to change the equipment build)))).

This would help this builds to be able to do more content on the game but without be as usefull as DPS classes because the skills damage and hits limitation. I think that they should continue applying this kind of attributes to healing skills from cleric classes too.

Imagine that your want to play full tank or healer as main character. You wont be able to do tell harsha or some solo raids or etc. This attributes/Arts wont give them a DPS like the one from DPS classes, but they will have a way to be able to do this kind of content aswell. This kind of attributes could be boosted on this kind of places (solo content + CMs and DSs) making it deal more damage/hits/lower cooldowns, and nerfed on the other ones (field and non-solo content except CM and DS) to make this more balanced but anyway they would have to have a good equipment to be able to do this/make this work.

Barrier and sanctuary from paladĂ­n could become a DPS Magic cyrcle with an attribute too for example.

etc etc

Booster support builds (like linker - thauma - enchant) have more problems to be affected by this ideas but i think that with some imagination It could be posible aswell.

Cryomancer is currently in a bad state. The class is supposed to be paired with other elemental classes, but hardly fits in a pyro-tao build. I still use the class with kino and onmyoji for CC, and it feels fine using cryo skills when all Genbu-related skills are on CD. But with episode 13 I had to switch my rod+shield equipment to staff+trinket to deal damage, losing all class bonuses.

Thaumaturge could easily become a defensive class, half of that is already done.

And I think you misunderstood the idea of this suggestion. It’s not about whether the class itself is salvaged as much but it is about the equipment choice that is sinking your damage just by equipping the equipment you are supposed to do,according to IMC.

For example, if I run Paladin with shield and mace to be able to use Sanctuary freely, I reduce the damage of every single red class on my build because of that. You cannot mean to compensate this by trying to add more damage options to Paladin, because this doesn’t solve the damage lost of the other classes. Even if you turn Paladin into a damage class, you cannot use mace and shield.

And this was the whole point, why I stated that the shield defense should be converted into attack so that other classes on the build do not suffer as much (they already suffer from the lack of support and weapon choice, but at least they can have the same or ~ the same attack as before with weapon & shield).
Every other adjustment destroys the purpose of the class. There is no identity left if you convert every skill/attribute from defense to attack to solve the problems of the game.
Only raw stats can solve this problem,so the class choice does not drag down your other two choices and still is viable in its original purpose.

It’s a good idea, but I think that the best alternative is to tighten the gap on what makes red/blue/green classes what they are.

They pretty much want everyone to be a dps, so make everything a dps. Shield users and blue classes being only slightly more sturdy and tanky, and supports still performing their role, but in the confines that they’re also expected to be dealing damage. Have gear atk/def, sfr, and hit count on skills reflect this.
It does ruin what these classes have as their core identity, but I honestly don’t believe IMC content design and class aesthetics are ever going to match up.

Understand…

Then my opinion about this is that you cant pretend that anyway xD when a player decides to take a class, he/she should know that he/she will invest in some kind of roll with it.

If you want damage, dont take paladin/peltasta/etc on your build class because it wont give you what you want. When you decide to take paladin/peltasta/etc, you are deciding to invest on become more tank and support knowing that you will reduce your damage in exchange for that.

This classes are not only determinated by their skills, they are determinated by their weapons limitation aswell as you said (and base % stats and etc), and i think that its not something that IMC did wrong.

Weapons limitations (like other stuff) exist to mark a difference between classes.

If a player wants to play an hibrid roll build class, that player will have to have this on mind. You wont be able to tank as a full tank build class, to support as a full support build class or DPS like a full DPS build class does because all the limitations (like weapons differences) that exist to dont make this posible.

Anyway, you can invest on a lot of stuff to make this viable, like enhance, legend cards, attributes and arts maxed, etc etc.

The idea about “situational attributes/boosts” that i gave on the last reply was to make all build class able to do some content that needs damage, but not to boost the class itself.

Fencer class for example, has an attribute that converts part of daggers subweapon attack to main attack, because they are a DPS class and cant use trinket because their main weapon is a rapier that is a 1 handed weapon. This class needs the attribute to be balanced with the other DPS classes about damage from equipment, but paladin/peltasta/etc are not supposed to do this kind of roll and they should not have this kind of attributes because of that.

Instead, tank classes should have an attribute to make them able to convert part of their main weapon attack to defense when they use a shield like swordman classes (at least paladin), and maybe an increased agro from monsters too.

Class color cyrcles could have a bonus itself to mark better the difference between classes like “red cyrcle classes have “x%” increase damage, blue cyrcle classes have “x%” increase agro and defense,…” etc.

Thats my opinion.

Something similar already exists: https://tos.neet.tv/attributes/10028 Only for swordsmen using 1H sword though.

Only if they let us choose which colours we want the classes to be. For example, one of my classes is Sage, which despite having a green icon, is a dps class. It would suck to lose damage just because a dps class is miscategorized as support.

My opinion on tanks: Swordie tanks do not work well in this game because the danger in raids doesn’t come from the bosses hitting hard in combination with limited healing. Instead the danger comes from failing gimmicks… which in most cases don’t care if you have a tank in the party or not. Instead, the one useful tank class we have in the game (Paladin) is being killed with the recent ktos change to Barrier…

To me it seems clears Imc wants the game to be dps+heal only instead of the classic dps+heal+tank trinity, which is a shame. Though I guess the 5-man party limit can also be blamed for this? Currently there really isn’t much reason to take a tank when you could take one extra dps.

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i know, i was talking about put this kind of attribute to the rest of the tank cyrcle classes.

This kind of situation that some support cyrcle classes could be used as DPS classes too, could be solved by the suggestion that you said (about choose the color cyrcle) but i think that it should be only applied on some classes (not all) and between some colors (not all).

Agree.

I think that basic attacks from bosses should get highly boosted (some of their skills too) to make tanks usefull on the game again. To make this viable, the HP from boss monsters should be reduced aswell to make it as easy/hard to kill as now but with 1 tank in the party.

I think that what IMC should try to reach about this is to revive this kind of partys with tanks, healers and DPS with some booster support class like linker, chronomancer, dievdirbys, thauma, templar, enchanter,… on their build class. Tank build classes (equipment and all based on tank too) are currently useless on PvM and usefull on PvP, they should make them usefull on PvM too.

Tanks could have defensive buffs based on their defense to apply to all the party members to make them able to survive against the attack from monsters for example, like another kind of support but not based on boost the damage, the defense instead, and make characters really weaks against bosses to make tanks necesary on raid partys.