This is about the nitpickiest nitpick I've ever picked, but come on, the current Heater Shield looks rubbish, particularly considering it's a 5* item in the otherwise impressive-looking Defender line. A bare-minimum recolour of the 2* Crimson Shield is not on; it's a letdown visually, and jars somewhat with the design progression of the line up to that point. Here's a quick 'n' dirty Photoshop job based on the Mighty Defender; nothing revolutionary, but it's better fit for the aesthetic of the line, and has some fancy lights to distinguish it from its predecessors and show off that there's meant to be a tiny furnace up ins. Something along those lines would be infinitely preferable to the frankly rather lazy recolour job we've got at the moment.
Heater Shield design
Thinking about this a little more, it struck me that the Drake Scale Mail line suffers from a similar problem. Now, don't get me wrong - palette-swapped armour upgrades are not inherently bad - a great many extant sets rely on it, and they looks absolutely fine. But the key is for those recolours to, well, look better than what came before. It's a difficult thing to explain clearly, especially as taste is such a subjective thing, but take the Wolver Coat line as an example; the colouration of the jacket body starts off very reminiscent of animal hide, and gets progressively more armour-like as the line progresses, up to the point where the line splits into the elemental effect-heavy Vog Cub Coat or the solid plate construction of the Skolver Coat. Actual model changes are minimal to nonexistent, but the carefully considered retexturing sells the line progression.
The Drake Scale Mail line goes from grey to blue to red.
See? It doesn't help that that particular line is visually low-impact; it's a much simpler, more streamlined set than the busy Wolver line. The Silvermail variant gets the progression pretty spot on, but the path from Drake to Wyvern to Dragon Scale Mail really does look like a two-minute Ctrl-U->Colorize job. There's obviously some progression on the arm and leg pieces, but the central colour's so dominant that they're easily missed.
My suggestion is pretty simple: tart up those two armours a bit. Maybe add some shinier highlights to the scales on the Wyvern suit to reflect (hurr) its increased durability, and a Vog Cub-esque volcanic effect to the scaled regions of the Dragon suit (which might help consistency anyway - the Volcanic Salamander suit has this effect already).
I would much prefer if the heater shield looked more like a modified hot-plate, rather than an actual shield.
I see where you're coming from, but I like the idea that Knights would use a functional armour piece as a stove, rather than modifying a cooking utensil into armour.
Hang on - is there any visual distinction between two of the four branches of the Stetson line? Is it just that placeholder images have been used in the wiki? Am I missing something?
Your revision looks good, actually. I have a Heater and an Aegis, and i would definitely like the former to look more like the latter.
Yeah, that's kind of what I'm getting at - recolours are alright, but that one in particular doesn't make sense in the context of the line.
Do remember that the Heater shield was not designed as an extension of the Defender line--it wasn't a counterpart to Aegis at all. It was actually just a stand-alone 5* shield with no lead-up line at all. They merged it into the Defender line after the big patch so that it wouldn't be, like, the one 5* item that was still tradable.
That said, I still think it looks a little lame. At least it could be bigger or something--and Aegis looks awesome, so making it more like Aegis would be a good start.
I think it should stay the same. In my opinion, it doesn't look like every other overdetailed shield. It does look like scarlet Shield thought but I really love the first design looks amazing
Maybe it could have the same design as green ward but deciliter so it looks asweome though I hope they don't make it look stupid because it's my favorite shield
i was thinking of this but i didnt wanted to start a new thread then this came up and i was like OMG YEAH! plus one to this and used that heater image as screensaver
Hope I'm not resurrecting a dead thread, but I'd like to throw in my lot. I'm working towards a Heater Shield (currently have a Mighty Defender) and the Heater Shield is certainly a visual letdown. Even if it had the same pattern, of the straight orange face, just with the same shape as the Mighty Defender and the Aegis, I'd be much happier, but I really like Effrul's concept. Looks awesome. Would really love to see this shield, which currently isn't much more impressive than a Defender, get it's dues as a piece of five star equipment.
+1 one for better design, but it shouldn't be in the agies shape. Not only is that unstovelike, the sash would combust.
That's true, it should get a different shape, being a stove, though the point is that it's a "makeshift" stove, so of course it's not going to be an ideal shape. And not including the sash is an obvious choice.
in short i like it its not to good but not too bad ether its just right thay should definatly change it to that