Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

If you are facing something that does AN damage, about the only thing you can do to prevent that damage (barring elemental immunity) is to not get hit. If the attack is ranged, a shield might help, with the bigger the parry bonus the better. However, if it is a melee attack, does a shield do any good?

Normally you would want as high a defense as possible to prevent getting shanked by a duskdagger, for example. Well, a blacksteel kite shield raises your defense nicely. However, if the attack would have hit if it weren't for the shield, my understanding is that the hit still lands but you get to add your shields considerable protection to your own. Which is great against anything except an armor-negating attack. In fact, since most shields offer a defense penalty, you are actually making yourself more vulnerable to AN melee attacks by equipping them.

Am I interpreting this correctly?

I ask because I had my pretender fight a dream horror once and he was horror marked and diseased as a result of the battle, despite a very considerable amount of defense. Now the easiest explanation there is just bad luck but I wanted to see if I was worsening my luck by bringing a towershield to the fight.

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

In short. Yes.

It does bypass shields. Even projectiles bypass shields if they are AN. And projectiles normally dont even roll for damage if they are blocked.

Arrow Fend still works I think. And Mistform still works once. Luck and twist fate will also protect you.

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

Wait, projectiles (like from Piercer) bypass shields if they are AN? I thought there was a bug where that didn't happen and tower shields could still block AN bolts.

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

Possibly in earlier versions of dominions, but not in the current. I have tested Piercers earlier and they always damage tower shielded troops.

But keep in mind that most tower shielded troops are size 2. If there are only 2 of them in a square then there is a 33% chance that the bolt will hit the third, non-existent soldier.

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

There are some edge cases. The Shield of Gleaming gold is still useful against melee AN Attacks, due to the awe effect. It doesn't matter if the attack is AN if they don't hit you with it first. The Vine Shield is good for basically the same reason, though it gets there through entanglement and not awe. Then there is the Lucky Coin. However your bog standard shield, Black Steel shield, Barrier, etc. are all basically worthless against AN. In some cases, they are actively counterproductive.

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

...Sheesh, this game is complicated..... :D

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/...?showtopic=601 Read here.

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

Sombre needs to reread the opening post. It explicitly asks about melee weapons. "However, if it is a melee attack, does a shield do any good?"

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

I imagine he didn't answer the point of melee vs shields because the answer is obvious if you think about the mechanics for a second.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43615#5 There's a link if you need a refresher.

In short, shields increase defense and should the attack roll fall beneath the natural + shield defense, the shield's prot value is then added to the prot value of the unit.

In shorter, you're asking if shield prot helps against armor negating damage.

In shortest, l2p.

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

Knai, the second post of the thread discusses AN projectiles, so sombre doesn't really need to re-read the thread, especially since that question had already been answered.

As an aside, you guys would know these things if you modded more!

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

Thanks a lot, guys, for making it yet more complicated...

For those who feel like being kind enough to answer (please don't refer me to another thread):

1. Shield has (a) defence and (b) protection
2. There is (a) melee and (b) missile combat

I make that 4 combinations. Which ones do/don't work against AN damage (weapon?). I'll even accept "Mostly"/"Hardly" for "Yes"/"No", if required.....

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

In practice none of those 4 combinations will stop AN attacks. And a shield dont provide defense. It provide Block. Its often the same, but not always. If it had actually been defense then it would indeed have worked.

As for Sombre's comment, he was saying that from a theoretical coding perspective, it is not necessarily true that an AN projectile will always pierce a shield. But in practice it will.

His comment is only relevant to modders.

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

To be specific with regards to shields, they have two seperate values, parry and defense. In general, shields lower your defense and grant you a greater level of parry. A successful parry check means that any missile weapon that hits it is negated outright (though as we can see there are certain ranged weapons that bypass shields altogether). Parry works differently with melee combat, instead causing a successful parry check to add the protection of the shield to a unit's listed protection. Since this is still just protection an AN melee weapon benefits from attacking most shielded targets. There's only a very few shields in the game that don't lower your defense. You need actual defense value in order to avoid getting hit, so you are better off with a second weapon that adds to defense, cat charm, etc.

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

LOL, you guys are priceless! I guess my bad for even assuming it would be that simple :)

Here's a grid:

Armor-Negating attack, does Shield help with:

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

Ummm, so the precise difference between Block and Defense is... ?

The difference between the "theoretical coding perspective" and "in practice" being what... ? :)

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

Let me see if I can make it a bit clearer. I will, however, not provide the answer in your grid, because it seems to me that you are not that clear about the difference between defence and parry.

Mêlée:

A unit with a shield has a defence and a parry value; the parry value is added on top of the defence. An example would be an arcoscephalian peltast which has a base defence score of 10 and a standard shield (protection 15, defence -1, parry 4, encumbrance 1). The peltast so has a defence score of 9 and a combined defence and parry score of 13. The latter is what you see in the unit information window; if you click on the defence skill you will see it broken down in defence and parry values.

In case of an mêlée attack against our shielded unit, there are 3 different possibilities: 1) the attack beats the combined defence and parry score (13), 2) the attack beats the defence score (9) but not the combined defence and parry score (13), 3) the attack does not even beat the defence score.

In case 1 it is the question of a clean hit. Damage will be rolled against the protection of the hit area (which for the peltast is 6, wherever the attack hits).

In case 2 it is the question of a shield hit. Damage will be rolled against the protection of the hit area (6) and the protection of the shield (15) added together, resulting in an effective protection of 21.

In case 3 it is the question of a miss. No damage will be rolled.

AN damage ignores protection which means that for such weapons 1 and 2 are effectively the same. Against an AN weapon our peltast would be better off without his shield.


Ranged:

Shield protection never matters when determining what happens in a ranged attack. The shields parry value adds to the chance of not getting hit at all. If the hit gets through, damage is calculated against protection at hit location - shield protection is not added.

As far as I know, all AN ranged weapons in the game also disregard the parry part of the ranged hit calculation. Whether this is a necessary result from the armour negating property or not, I could not say. The documentation is, as far as I can see, not entirely unambigous in this case and I have not experimented with ranged AN attacks.

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

Sombre posted this on dom3mods:

So AN and ignoring shields are sparate properties for ranged weapons, but all vanilla AN ranged weapons seem have them both, which is why they seem to be linked. But if you mod a ranged weapon to do AN damage it will not ignore shields unless you set that as well.

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

Exactly. Which, in practicality, means two things.
1) Shields are more or less worthless against AN attacks outside of special effects (Awe, Entanglement, Fire Shield, whatever).
2) The spaghetti code mess that is Dominions 3 is messy even in this area.

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

Against ranged AN weapons, a Shield of Valor is a good choice. :D

Re: Are Shields Worthless against AN Attacks
 

I prefer the lantern shield. If the ranged AN weapons are pointed at some fuzzy green ball off to the side of the map instead of the shield wielder, it is serving its purpose. Plus, the lantern shield is wonderful for ruining battle orders to begin with.