Shield Bash Changes
Wed, 07/08/2020 - 22:00
Sir-Sappy
I very rarely see players using shield bash, it's able to stun at the cost of half your shield regardless of your current gear, it's useful in some situations .. and not just for breaking blocks.
The thought of being able to buff up the damage of Shield Bash outside of sprite abilities and weapon damage pickups sounded like an interesting thought I had when I was playing around with shield bashing. I was disappointed to notice that heat didn't affect the Shield Bash damage while looking into it.
The few changes I thought of was to give Shield Bash more damage as you heat your shield, and possibly stat bonuses to overall damage (Like Chaos's +Med damage bonus or Black Kat's +High damage bonus) and faction damage bonuses (Sprite perks and other stats on armor) raising the damage of Shield Bash more. Just for the slightly more incentive for players to shield bash and possibly invest in crafting the Tortodrone event shields and use them despite their negative stat.
Shield bashing doesn't do very much damage to begin with regardless, but this isn't meant to ask for a flat out damage buff for it.
For what it's worth, universal buffs do affect your shield bash. It's most noticeable when you shield bash with a swifstrike buckler, since it does the animation faster than all other shields by default. Black kat and chaos also boost its damage, but with such little damage in the first place it's not all that noticeable.
For what it's worth, Shield Bash appears to be connected to whatever weapon you're currently holding. You'll notice when one weapon is cursed, shield bash will damage you, but if you hold a weapon that isn't cursed shield bash will not hurt you. I'd imagine it's coded in a way that it uses similar stats to the weapon you're holding, which may make shield bash buffs a bit more difficult to do.
I'd love for a shield rework to introduce shield classes and unique shield bashes, but that's something I've gone over several times at this point. Shield bashes having unique stat boosts and doing more damage would be good, but I also think that shield bash should be doable so long as your shield health is over 50% instead of requiring a 100% shield to perform.