Anybody know the mechanics of Blade Shield?

[GenericKen]

How exactly does it work? Is it a sort of short range holy fire damage flashing effect?

If so, how often does it flash? Does it trigger damage on contact with a mob or do I have to wait for the flash?

[GenericKen]

NOBODY knows?

[librarian]

Heiho,

AFAIK the Blade Shield more works like the Armor Skills with the sorc, so you don't have any 'flashes', it just deals out damage, when an enemy is near you.

As a feature, the range depends on the weapon you wear, and some damage concepts work along with the skill, like chances to trigger some spells (including AD, HBT Flee and Freeze) and also the chance of doing a Crushing Blow.
Try out Iceblink, Woestave, Rattlecage and/or Items with a certain chance of doing spells 'when hit' and 'on attack'.

[Tub]

all enemys in weapon range are attacked once every 20 frames (0.8 seconds), with 95% cth. All damage from weapon / other equipment is dropped, only the skill-damage, crushing blow, freeze, chance to cast xxx on attack (including blind and monster flee) and knockback is applied.

funny thing is, an attack with blade shield CAN decrease the durability of your weapon for some reason.

[GenericKen]

I read somewhere that it would attack several times a second.

Does the level of Blade Shield change the frequency of the flash or the to-hit?

[Charis]

Blade shield works as follows...

- It swings at the same rate as your weapon would, so weapon speed is important
- It hits all creatures within a range equal to your weapon range, so range is vital
- It hits 95% (or 100%) of the time, so your own AR/to hit is irrelevant
- Crushing blow, monster flee, hit blinds targets, knockback, chance to cast xyz all apply
- Elemental dmg from charms, etc, do not
- Comments from others contrary to the above have not used the skill :P

My Bladerunner's weapon of choice: "Black" Knout or flail -- 1H so she can use shield,
along with range 3. Other fun weapons include Bing Sz, and Polearms with range 5 and ctc.
She also wears Goblin Toes and a few other ctc goodies. Iceblink rocks *if* you stay within clvl near mlvl. That and a few other key 'effects' rely on the difference between monster mlvl and players clvl -- so she's kinda stuck around lvl 50 having to play where mlvl is near hers rather than deeper where she would like to be.

It's a fun variant build. Oh, and added pts to the skill only effect duration and the dmg from the skill (which is small compared to all the other 'effects' I have going on it) Hmmm, a fun variant skilll... i wonder if that means it's on the chopping block for v1.10?

Charis

[Ice]

- It swings at the same rate as your weapon would, so weapon speed is important.

Some time ago, I had tried out blade shield on SP with a whole assortment of weapons (grim scythes, pikes, knouts, colossus swords, claws, dual claws), with and without BoS, and with IAS varying from 0 to a lot. Throughout the tests with me standing still doing nothing, the BS pulsing speed is virtually constant at around once per second despite the attack speed ranging from 8 to 28 fpa.

The mechanics of the skill seemed to have changed in the beta... not exactly sure what though.

[Charis]

There may be some SP differences or differences from the beta, but on my latest
(and active) assassin, the following is true:

- slow wpn makes for very slow pulsing, it's not subtle, but very noticeable
- with a decent BoS lvl, it's also quite clear that impacts the pulse speed

In fact... my first indication that BoS has elapsed and needs a recharge is because the pulse has slowed down and things actually hit me before the IceBlink effect kicks in ;P
So I'm not sure if it's a realms/SP thing or just a version difference, but the wpn speed effects
are easy to see for yourself in practice.

Charis

[Occhidiangela]

As I recall, Open Wounds also worked with Blade Shield, but it has been a while since I used it with the Malice Claws, since I traded in my +5 life regen circlet for a different one.

[Ice]

It doesn't seem very different when I tried it on the realms.

During those tests, I used 100% crushing blow as a gauge (no knockback or hit freeze) and the amount of time I needed to bring monsters' life to say 25% is very close. On the realms, the differences in speeds could be something like hone sundan at 13 (or 15) fpa and a knout at 8 fpa. If it's dependent on weapon speeds, it should be very visible but i'm simply not observing it :(.

And with my HC blade shield sin who alternates between Hone Sundan, Grim's Burning Dead and a 'black' flail, it didn't feel like the pulse rate was higher with black either.

[Arutha]

I remember wasting an "um" rune in my weapon only to discover that it didn't work. :(
Other equipment with that mod didn't make monsters bleed either.

I believe that Charis is right and that weapon speed and BoS do affect the pulse rate.

Unfortunately, since you'll be using a two-handed weapon, Fade seems mandatory. I happened to be partied with another such assassin.
She was optimized for pulse speed (using lots of ias gear and BoS).
I was using a slow weapon (the Minotaur) and Fade.
I never died. She kept dying.

Biggest problem I had with my assy was Hell mode. I actually stopped playing before taking her to Hell so I never got to solve that problem.
Hit Blinds Monster was a crucial mod for crowd control.
But to overcome the physical resistance and keep crushing blow effective, chance to cast amplify damage is crucial.
Unfortunately, you can't have both.

[Occhidiangela]

One point in Mind Blast.

Thanks for the reply on Open Wounds.

[Arutha]

Mindblast isn't the solution for me.

1- Blade Shield disrupts spell casting. I tried that variant coupled with trap using, and having to click several times to lay down one trap is both annoying and dangerous. Although I don't remember testing it specifically with MB, I suspect MB would be affected the same way.
2- I'm not going to play a variant if it's only to fall back to cookie-cutter tricks. MB is THE crowd control skill for assies. Blade Shield offers alternatives, so I'd rather explore those alternatives instead of falling back to the same old recipes.

[Occhidiangela]

Nor Mind Blast were Blade Shield, the last I was messing about with them both, however, it has been a while. Psychic Hammer is a bit trickier to use versus a mob, particularly in desynch/lag conditions, but it still slows things down although you may wear out your finger doing so.

Mind Blast is a skill in the Shadow tree. It has many uses. The ubercheese is gone, the "one hit kill after wearing off conversion," so why not take your cookie cutter remark elsewhere?

Some variants have a great deal of trouble with any number of particular critters, so if you are going to wear your variant hat, consider that your crowd control capability may be moot.

[Arutha]

Neither Psychic Hammer nor Mind Blast were Blade Shield...

Where exactly in my post did I say mind Blast = Blade Shield ??
Unless you somehow forgot a word in your sentence, it makes no sense.

The ubercheese is gone, the "one hit kill after wearing off conversion,"

Again, where did I refer to that bug??
I said Mindblast is the ultimate crowd control skill for an assy. Not the ultimate crowd slaughter skill.

so why not take your cookie cutter remark elsewhere?

And how about you stay civil ?
That remark was totally unwarranted for.

I said that in my book, Mindblast is part of the cookie-cutter assy arsenal.
You may differ.
No need to do so in an offensive manner.

[Occhidiangela]

Neither Psychic Hammer nor Mind Blast were Blade Shield...

Where exactly in my post did I say mind Blast = Blade Shield ??  Unless you somehow forgot a word in your sentence, it makes no sense.

Yep, I screwed up the edit, I had meant to say that neither PH nor MB were interrupted by Blade Shield . . . sloppy me!

The ubercheese is gone, the "one hit kill after wearing off conversion,"

Again, where did I refer to that bug??  I said Mindblast is the ultimate crowd control skill for an assy. Not the ultimate crowd slaughter skill.

Right. That is exactly what it is. A crowd control skill. The original antipathy for Mind Blast by a great many folks was tied to the 'feature' however, to describe a skill as "cookie cutter" implies a certain sneer. I find that approach to be as myopic as the reliance on cookie cutters by much of the bnet population. Mind Blast was a skill designed for a particular reason, crowd control for the Assassin. Each char has a crowd control skill, or a few crowd control skills I suppose, depending on the class.

  so why not take your cookie cutter remark elsewhere?

And how about you stay civil ?  That remark was totally unwarranted for.  I said that in my book, Mindblast is part of the cookie-cutter assy arsenal.  You may differ.  No need to do so in an offensive manner.

Three points:

"Uncalled for" or "unwarranted" are what you are looking for. I get your drift, though.
"Assy?" Nice bnet speak. :P
"No need to do so in an offensive manner." Now that I look at it with fresh eyes, you are correct, I was being snippy -- or even assy -- for no good reason. Apologies are in order. Mi dispiace Arutha. :o

[Arutha]

Apologies accepted. ;)

My "antipathy" for Mindblast has nothing to do with the bug it was plagued with. I think it was fixed in 1.09, and I waited for 1.09 before moving from CD2 to LOD.

It is rather similar to my antipathy for Whirlwind or Multiple Shots.

I tried several builds for my Blade Shield assassin. For one of them, I tried Cloak of Shadows as my crowd control skill.
But it too gets disrupted by Blade Shield. :(

In the end, I decided that crowd control would also be Blade Shield's job. Hit Freezes Monster does it nicely, but in nightmare act 4 and 5, and then in Hell from act 2 onwards, you're too far below monster levels for it to work reliably (and of course, cold immunes in Hell aren't affected).
Hit Blinds Target worked nicely for me. But it can't be combined with amplify damage, which probably disqualifies it for Hell.
Knockback was a huge disappointment: it seemed to work less than 20% of the time.

[Occhidiangela]

I have found that with both Nef bows and Clegs Gloves, knockback does NOT work with every successful hit. I use as evidence the red leach swirl from a leach ring for hit, and the knock back NOT happening.

Cloak: yes, I have experienced the "cant cast" problem with that one, as well as some of the MA skills.

[Mavfin]

Venom now works with Blade Shield......

[Brista]

I have found that with both Nef bows and Clegs Gloves, knockback does NOT work with every successful hit.

Hammerman mentioned:

100% chance to work on small monsters
50% chance to work on medium monsters
25% chance to work on large monsters

(that was in 1.09)