I have a Crest of Almire, and I was wondering how the Fire/Shock resistances work on it exactly. I tried bringing the shield up when I was on fire, it didn't reduce the damage or the time I was afflicted by it, and Shock damage is nullified with a shield anyway. Friends of mine with the Grey Owlite Shield see the same thing.
Are shield resistances useless, or only applied when your shield is broken, or what?
Shield defenses are tied to shield health. Think of the shield as a separate entity with its own health (that regenerates, unlike yours). When you put your shield up, damage goes to the shield first, and then finally to you when it breaks. Therefore, a shield with pierce defense will take less damage from a wolver bite, and thus block more wolver hits. Likewise, fire from Rovers, Scorchers and Slag breath are "fire" element, and a shield with fire resist can tank those flames with near-impunity. The defense also takes into account "status" elements, hence a Skelly shield will tank poison zombie hits like a champ, while the equivalent Owlite will break with only a swipe or two (the zombie inflicts shadow, normal and poison). This is why status Lumbers like the Ice and Poison types are brutal- their attack is normal, elemental, stun and ice/poison/whatever. Most of the popular shields (Owlite, Crest, VPS, Barbarous) don't guard against two or more of those types, and take massive damage if you're unlucky enough to have one thrown in front of you.
To defend against status, the shield needs to be up when the status is inflicted.
Shield defenses being tied to shield health makes sense, however it doesn't make sense to me for all status effects. For instance, I believe that some attacks like poison zombie attacks have a "poison damage element" in them, but I doubt that any attacks have sleep or curse elements in them. So by your definition of shield resistances wouldn't those be useless?
And also are you saying that shield resistances have no effect on self status effects such as gran faust self curse or fang of vog self fire?
I haven't looked up any other threads about this cause im too lazy, so sorry if this has already been adressed, but I would like to know how shields work cause I have a gran faust that I like to charge up a lot.
What pringerX said.
It's exactly what a dev answered in a similar topic long time ago.
@Twagz: attacks imbued with a status effect act differently when they hit you or the shield.
When they hit you, they do their own type of damage plus inflict you that status.
When they hit the shield , the "status part" becomes additional damage (as a shield can't be put on fire or frozen etc.) that can be reduced/canceled only by the shield status resistance.
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/2157#comment-13174
here is that Admin's (mjohnson) answer I was talking about
Indeed, sleep resist on shields is as useless as sleep UVs. BUT if slooms were introduced, your Jelly Shield would tank hits like a champ. Curse resist will only help you defend against Phantoms in Graveyards, since they are the only enemies in the game that inflict Curse. Specifically, it will allow you to better defend their charge attacks only.
Shield resists also have no effect on self-inflicted statuses, as you obviously can't shield while charging a GF or FoV.
Shield resistances work in mysterious ways.
The current belief is that they act as additional defense, against attacks that cause that status effect. I don't know how true that is, though - shield health is a difficult thing to measure.
It might be they reduce the time the status effect lasts if you're affected by it when your shield breaks, or reduces the chance of being affected by it what that happens, but without any real numbers, it's a hard thing to test.