I don't follow. You just said you don't like the idea of a PvM-exclusive fix, but slayer shields (a PvM-only fix) are OK?
I definitely think parry needs an improvement. Back when I was a total newb to this game my buddy incorrectly told me parry had a chance to deflect ebolts... so because of that I had parry for most of my UO career. Even after I figured out that was as wrong as eating fish steaks would help with fizzling. Gideon's idea is pretty cool. Maybe give the different shields some different functions? I imagine a heater shield would be better at blocking fire spells because it's bigger. type thing.
Shield blocking firebreath would be pretty cool. Maybe not completely, but in the same way that it blocks weapon hits? Given that shields aren't used at all in pvp though, I think there should be some improvement to their usage in those situations. I'm going to paste some of my past posts in here, not to sound like a broken record but I think there's some easy but effective fixes that could be made simply by making shields do what they did or are supposed to do: The AR provided by shields on this shard is much lower than it was in era. UO Powergamers had a detailed post on this in archive.org. I have the full table, but for brevity... Buckler (UOR): 4 AR Buckler (2000): 7 AR Buckler of Invuln (UOR): 22 AR Buckler of Invuln (2000): 32 AR Metal Kite (UOR): 9 AR Metal Kite (2000): 16 AR Metal Kite of Invuln (UOR): 27 AR Metal Kite of Invuln (2000): 41 AR Here's what is stupid: because your chance to block rises as shield AR goes down, and your amount of damage blocked goes up as your block chance goes down... virtually every shield of a given magic level is the same. Buckler of Invulnerability, AR 22, blocks 56% of hits, for an average of 11 per block, or 6.2 per hit. Wooden Shield of Invuln, AR 23, blocks 54% of hits, for an average of 11.5 per block, or 6.2 per hit. Tear Kite of Invulnerability, AR 25, blocks 50% of hits, for an average of 12.5 per block, or 6.2 per hit. Metal Kite of Invulnerability, AR 27, blocks 46% of hits, for an average of 13.5 per block, or 6.2 per hit. However... any changes made to shield AR will not improve shields, because it will just make them block less hits. There needs to be a change made to the chance-to-block formula as well. And that's what gets a little tricky because it takes a little time to come up with a solution and code it.
I once saw someone solo an AW toe-to-toe with a dexxer in another shard. It was a parry/macer IIRC, with no peace. Straight up power and healing. Don't think he wore the shield much due to poison, but why shouldn't it be possible here? He soloed a Balron toe-to-toe too...and he did use the shield more in that one.
I think Gideons idea is by far the best solution for the parry issue. First it would give Dexxers some options for lategame pvm, which is undoubtedly very important for every player who loves to play melee classes. Secondly there wouldnt be any pvp changes at all, which is also very important for a big part of the community too (we can talk about damage mitigation/reflect against tamed dragons ofc, which is a nice idea in my opinion, but off topic here) But propably my biggest point would be that Dexxers always run the risk of loosing it. It fits the risk vs reward scheme of this Shard perfectly. TLDR: yes for gideons suggestion Gideons post:
I'm against the whole idea of slayer shields....why? Because it is just another giant gold sink for dex based characters to have to function. If/when some sort of item insurance/bless comes to compete with bonded dragons then maybe, but till then your just sinking more into the risk vs reward.
This is exactly what I was thinking too. I like the concept of the slayer shields but the cost to buy and the risk to use them will be just as outrageous as carrying weapon slayers.
Holy hell, 15,000 views!!! Yes, 100 Parrying and didn't end up using the shield due to the poison claws. That's one of the biggest weaknesses of a parry dexer IMO: always having to disarm it to drink a potion. With the equip delay it just takes a lot of time and leaves you without the shield for much of the time. So no matter how good shields are or become, against a poisoner or some other situation that requires frequent potions, they become less and less useful. A few differences from that shard to here... here we get a 75% hit rate in PvM, versus 50% over there. Also they had Protection jewelry, which stacked with Arch Protection I think. So I had around 100 displayed AR. And yeah, the magic reflect jewelry could be refreshed pretty frequently. Most of the fight was toggling between magic reflect items, cure potions, and bandages, watching timers and keeping an eye out for poison messages.
