class identity comes from your spells and stats though not your equipment, a mage already feels completely different from a warrior in every fight. restricting shields doesn’t add identity and just adds an arbitrary rule
common sense but i feel like AO is potential man when it comes to player expression since there could be so many different hybrids and fun builds but we have forced stat point distribution
Class Identity comes from moveset and maybe special statuses later on.
spells and stats create the offensive identity but equipment is where the defensive identity should come from. a mage and a warrior feeling different in how they deal damage means nothing if they can build identical survivability. the rule isn’t arbitrary.
moveset and status effects are the offensive side. survivability is the other half. if every class can stack defense the same way then the identity only exists in how you deal damage not in how you play overall. that’s half a class identity at best.
When classes can deal over 1000 per move damage and 200 a m1 with decently sized aoe there’s no real reason to to make a option for more defence with already has a downside to be exclusive to a single class
the damage numbers being broken doesn’t justify making defense stacking easier. if anything it’s more reason to have meaningful restrictions. two broken systems don’t cancel each other out, they just make the balance worse.
You can equip an Ardent Dragonscale Greatshield to gain 440 defense and only lose 25% dodge distance. That’s 2-3 extra attacks you can tank almost for free.
why are we acting like -25% dodge distance isnt a heavy enough restriction. -25% anything is a decent restriction, if you lost 25% of anything else in the game you wouldnt have people saying its basically for free.
-25% dodge distance sounds significant until you remember that mages aren’t relying on dodge distance the same way a melee class does. a berserker eating -25% dodge to get 440 defense feels that penalty every fight. a mage sitting at range casting spells barely notices it. the restriction exists but it doesn’t hit every class the same way, which is the whole point.
while i agree the resitrictions arent equal to all classes i just think the idea of shields not being usable by mages is odd. maybe a different restriction should be made when applying a shield.
what kind of restriction though? anything short of just not allowing it either hits the wrong classes harder or gets bypassed with the right enchant. enchants already show that stat penalties can be mitigated. if the restriction can be geared around it’s not really a restriction.
then the problem is defense stats on gear being too homogeneous across the board, not shields specifically. if every class can stack the same armor anyway then shields aren’t the outlier, the whole gear system needs more class differentiation, not just one item type getting restricted
yeah uhhhh some stats work more efficiently on different classes than others, but yknow what is the most efficient on any class? powerstacking! yum yum i love doing 500 on tap and still having 4k hp to spare
okay you’re literally proving my point for me, if powerstack builds are already doing a ton of damage with high hp then shields aren’t even the issue vetex just needs to look at the whole stat ceiling
yea this convo turned from “hey shields are too good” to "hey generally the whole system is awful
even with a power decrease that turned my 260 into 200, im still doing 500 on tap lmao
shields are already mechanically treated as a weapon-class item in every way except passive defense, so restricting that last piece isn’t an arbitrary change. and “the whole gear system needs fixing” doesn’t argue against fixing shields, it just means there’s more work to do after. why overhaul the whole thing when there’s a smaller, easier to fix solution?
yeah at that point restricting shields is just rearranging deck chairs, FatWhale’s whole argument kind of falls apart if the meta is already broken at a more fundamental level