Need some info on Shield Defense

Just came back to CoH/CoV after a couple years and pretty intrigued about this Shield Defense secondary for Scrappers.

Could someone shed some light on this matter for me? Do assume that I don't know ANYTHING about Shield Defense to begin with. I have heard that it's the BEST secondary for Scrappers at the moment, which is huge to me since there should not be a best of anything.

Any inputs would be greatly appreciated. Anything from as basic as an in-depth power description to something advanced such as how to maximize certain powers would be great. I do know the game mechanics so you don't have to explain that to me.

Thanks!

Shield defense seems to have been intended as a 'high offense, lower defense' type of armor set similar to fiery aura. It's got a mixture of melee/ranged/aoe defense, some +max HP, and some resistances for mitigation, but the total package is not as strong out of the box as most other secondaries. On the other hand, the aggro aura boosts your damage for each foe in range, and shield charge is a devastatingly powerful teleport/nuke style power (think lightning rod on steroids - if you haven't seen it, teleport to nearby location while doing a ton of AoE damage where you appear). It also has some minor ally-keyed elements (getting a bit of extra defense for allies in melee range of you, giving nearby allies a bit of defense in return), but they're mostly flavor.

There are two reasons that people are saying it's the 'best set' at the moment. First, shield charge is bugged and is doing more than twice as much damage as it's supposed to. This gives the set more AoE damage than some blasters. That's a short term advantage, as castle is aware of this and it's been confirmed to be on the chopping block.

The second reason is more fundamental. The set was designed as low survivability, high offense, but due to the way defense (as opposed to resistance) works in this game, even a 'low survivability' defense set can be made absurdly tough by stacking defense bonuses from IO sets on top of it. As designed, you're supposed to be able to push the set's defense up to a maximum of 30%ish, and that's with pool powers like weave and combat jumping added in. Without those you're sitting at 21%ish, which is low enough that you actually do have to worry a bit if you can't kill your foes fast enough. With people tossing around massive gobs of cash on IO sets, though, you can take those low defenses and ramp them all the way up to the 45% softcap, giving you the mitigation of an eluded SR scrapper 24/7. That completely negates the 'slightly squishy but offensively powerful' balance tradeoff in the set's design, and so you end up with one of the most powerful offensive *and* defensive sets in the game. It costs an absolute *ton* of cash, but it's very powerful once you've got it done.

(Fiery aura doesn't really suffer from this balance issue because it's resistance based instead of defense, and it's nigh impossible to stack significant amounts of resistance set bonuses.)

I see, that makes sense. I've already tried all other Tank primaries though, was just looking forward to Shield Defense.

So what you're saying is that Shield Defense is broken for those who can afford to IO it out the a**. How are the Dev's planning on fixing this issue? The majority of players don't have that much influence to push the set's defense to its soft cap. If the defense is going to get nerfed, the set may become useless, since less than 20% defense is practically useless. As for Shield Charge, I'm happy if it does the same damage as Lightning Rod :]

You get a shield.

It doesn't take a huge sum of influence to get the defense higher than was perhaps intended. My Fire/Shield had positional defense in the lower 40s by the time he hit 50, on a leveling build, using the influence he earned while leveling. But frankly, you can do almost as well most of the time once you hit 32.5% defense, since you can pop a small purple for any difficult fight and be soft capped. I personally think it's pretty easy to get yourself to that point, so I think that Shield Defense is easy to make very survivable, even while leveling, or at least for the "long" slog through the upper levels.

My opinion doesn't seem to be the consensus view, though. I think most people, or at least the majority, find Shield Defense to be pretty squishy while leveling. Which hints that in practice, it's playing for most people just the way the devs seem to have intended - giving up survivability for better offense.

As far as what to play, I wouldn't sweat it. The primaries and secondaries all operate in a fairly narrow band of performance. The worst Scrapper combination is still a Scrapper.

If you still want to go with Shield Defense, I'd do this for a super cheapo build with good survivability:

• Slot Deflection and Battle Agility with three defense
• Slot Weave with three defense
• Slot Combat Jumping with one defense
• Slot a Steadfast Protection unique
• Slot Phalanx Fighting with one defense
• Slot Active Defense with three recharge for a nice margin of error
• Slot True Grit with three heal
• Slot Against All Odds with one endurance reducer
• One with the Shield is optional
• Use a single small purple inspiration at a time as required

Just out of curiosity, how much influence does it take to soft cap Shield Defense?

wait, wait, wait... When you say Shield Charge is bugged and dealing nearly double damage, do you mean it has been doing so since it was made, or just recently? I mean has it recently been doubled and is being set back to original, or has it always been double and the devs have JUST caught it (if this is the case, that's just sad)

And I wanted to input my advice. My main toon is a Broadsword/Shield scrapper named CODF. On a build that cost roughly 200-400 mil, I have almost softcapped defense (its about 45-50-ish), and hasten is down for less than 20 seconds. To put it in a nutshell, this character is just flat out devestating in PvE, but quite useless in a PvP match. At +3x6 difficulty, I can handle a whole mob of Bobcat's praetorians pounding on me for about 3-5 minutes straight, and they NEVER last that long once I start fighting back. My second favorite power in the set is against all odds. Between build up, against all odds, and the already heavy-hitting attacks from my broadsword, I can make Fire/ blaster's jealous with my big orange numbers. BUT... PvP players and some AVs manage to cut through Shield's incredible power and decimate me rather quickly. so if you want a greart PvE fighter, shield is the way to go. for PvP, not exactly the best :S

i wouldnt be too worried, CODF. Shield is overperforming on multi-billion inf builds, but the biggest mistake they made was jacking shield charge damage to nuke levels without noticing. I found that Shield charge itself often overshadowed the contribution of the entire rest of the team, obliterating spawns before others got out of build-up animation, or could lay down debuffs...and this is vs. +2 mobs.

It is a viscerally stunning power, but it is pretty off-kilter. I expect to see it adjusted in some way (lowered dmg, or increased recharge, or some version of both?), and i think the set will be in a sweet spot.

Also, regarding fire aura- castle said he'd take a look at it, as to what can be done to return it to a true 'lower mitigation, higher dmg' armor set. good stuff.

Yeah, my BS/SD main (CODF, Crawls on Dungeon Floor. The reason for my odd forum name) is my favorite toon. VERY extensive backstory, about 10 costumes (I spend a lot of money at the tailor rotating costumes), and he's just downright fun to play. Like i said, he is my only decent toon, red or blue. I've got a lvl 50 blaster who drops like a rock and a lvl 50 troller that Im just not patient enough to play. If they nerf me too much Im pretty much screwed :/ ah well, he's still fun to play. He was even fun before I had Phalanx fighting, any IOs, or Weave. So it'd take a serious nerf to make me weaker than I was then.

so it sounds like besides weakening Shield Charge, the set wont be too different for a low-cost build, no?

This is not really directed towards anyone in this thread, but it's something I'd like to get off my chest and maybe even some feedback on. For a while now the Devs have known that Shield Charge is over performing. But they have had more pressing matters to attend to, so that is why it has not been fixed (yes fixed, not nerfed..). Will the fix come with Going Rogue or i18? I'm not sure, but I doubt it. If I had to guess it will happen after Going Rogue is released.

Now the part that gets me is when I'm out and about and teaming with some random people. They keep asking me, "What am I going to do when SC gets nerfed?" My reply is always the same, honestly I don't think it will effect me much at all. And it's not getting nerfed it's getting fixed.

When I run missions by myself or to help some friends level up, I run my farm at +3/x8 and that's with Bosses. Which I hardly have any problem with. Jump into mob, let Against all Odds stack up, hit Soul Drain, then follow it up with Shield Charge. All the minions are wiped out and most of the Lts as well. The ones that are not only need 1-2 more strikes and they are finished. The bosses take maybe a dozen hits to fall and then I rinse and repeat.

The thing is even if they lower the damage of Shield Charge to say Lightning Rods level it will still wipe out the minions and put a good chunk in the Lts. A couple more hits here and there is not going to make much of a difference. But let's say I am farming at more 'efficient' levels. Mobs +0/x6 (or 8) without bosses. No matter how they change SC you would still be more than capable of blowing through mobs at this level.

So why is it that so many people think SD's is going to suck or not be much fun once SC is fixed. Do that many out there rely on SC that much? My attack chain of Smite, Siphon Life, Site, Midnight Grasp, Smite is a whole lot sweeter than that.