shield blocking "interrupts" the uninterruptable?

[Crystalion]

I was doing some testing in classic with a few mods to skills.txt to make things really unfair for the poor monsters...

I made War Cry uninterruptable and noticed a couple of ways for it to still "fail" for me:

1) I don't know about blocking, but some of those spear cat type monsters in act 2 hell can Avoid apparently.
2) it still looked like I was getting interrupted... until I took off my shield (and stopped blocking)

These interpretations correct you think? Does #2 still apply in LoD? (Class handles blocking a little differently afaik).

This reminds me: skills.txt says 5% chance for raise skeleton to have a shield, but I see them with shields (visually) all the time... what's up there? Do they block? (unlike act 3 mercs, e.g.). Is it really 5% and some of the shields shown are bogus?

[librarian]

Heiho,

the new way of blocking as far as I've understood this causes the graphics engine to hide blocking animations, if one blocking chance was successful, for a certain amount of time.
OTOH the game server engine still has to do the blocking, causing a kind of desync between graphics and server engine.
So when you cry/hack/slay/poke your way through the game wearing a shield, you very probably just whiffle around hitting hot air every time after you had a successful block.

But maybe I'm completely wrong here ;-)

_____________

The 5% chance for a shield with the skellies counts only that kite shield appearance as a shield, their normal round shields are always there. But its just decoration, both of them.

[Guest]

1) I don't know about blocking, but some of those spear cat type monsters in act 2 hell can Avoid apparently.

No, it's just their blocking animation.

For skills with sequence (long ones, charge, whirlwind, eh, you should know) their uniteruptability doesn't work when just starting them, for normal ones (ie cast animation) there should be no problem - I've tried with a lot of skills. Smite(ing monsters) might be able to interupt?

This reminds me: skills.txt says 5% chance for raise skeleton to have a shield, but I see them with shields (visually) all the time... what's up there? Do they block? (unlike act 3 mercs, e.g.). Is it really 5% and some of the shields shown are bogus?

You could always try to raise their chance to block - should be easy to see if they're blocking all the time then. Monstats2.txt affects their visual appearence, although with summoned skellies it's a lot of hard-coded things related to them - their line there doesn't make much sense.


Oh, and War Cry can be blocked.

[Crystalion]

For skills with sequence (long ones, charge, whirlwind, eh, you should know) their uniteruptability doesn't work when just starting them, for normal ones (ie cast animation) there should be no problem - I've tried with a lot of skills.

Interesting. Is that tied to client/server, or anim frame threshhold or what?

This might be like the diff in casting a Town Portal: it is uninterruptible, but works "better" casting from a scroll in belt via belt hotkey (1,2,3,4 default). Very useful to know/use in "tight spots".

That Warcry can be blocked is interesting. I assume its because its only physical? Or is there a flag in the .txt file to look at? I'm guessing Shock Wave has the same (problem).

Of course if they are physical, then I'd expect an Azurewrath wielder to bypass the resist physical of undead (but not the blocking). Fun toy to have... I wonder how rich I'd have to be on ladder to trade for one, hmm. (Yes, I know I can make one SP np, but I'm seriously playing on bnet, for fun that is, these days--enjoyed killing DC this morning in fact, took hours).