PvP: Encrypted Shield God Mode?

[CarnivorousDeathParrot.2]

I don't use warrior myself but in PvP I keep running into this thing I want to ask about:

A build where the block rate is high to a point that the Shield barrier is always on and no damage is taken, ever.

I see Encrypted Shield builds regularly and they clearly seem to profit from high block rate. But only in about 3 out of several dozens of battles, this zero dmg thing came up. Nothing too suspicious in the on-paper stats.

Is it:
- a legit build?
- an exploit?
- an accidental effect due to a glitch?

[Ozymandius]

There is a new place in the forum called "Arena" to post questions related to PvP or Arena play. It will be nice to have a place to share which abilities work best in the Arena versus game play.

Like you I do run into builds that seem to be able to block or deflect everything that my hero throws at them. I mostly tend to just try to fight other BHs since it is easier to judge what their impact will be and if I can survive the initial attack where I get stunned before I can even move.

I am thinking about testing out a Warrior in the Arena because a Fury warrior with Charge and Leap is hard to beat (at least for a BH). While a BH can usually out maneuver a standard Warrior, there seems to be no way to escape the charging and leaping, which can be triggered from a long distance. I also ran into what looked like an evenly matched Warrior with the Vampirism trinket that sucked the life out my BH.

Don't even get me started about the Mages that stun or freeze you and destroy you with Frost Bolt before you have a chance to react. Not really sure how to beat that since the AI opponent always gets the first move.

[Edd]

Yeah, I play a warrior and don't have the gear yet to support the shield build, but that seems to be where the end game for warriors is.

I do agree that mages and warriors are harder than BHs. I mean, you can see by how many mages are in the top ranks.

Mages seem to have a number of overpowered abilities, 6 second stun on a 9 second cooldown? It's fun being stunned 67% of the time, right? The damage taken while frozen is ridiculous.

[Edd]

Did you check his stats? It might be legit, just not working as intended. Warriors can get large amounts of damage mitigation, then couple that with a large amount of life gain from Sanguinarius (Sword), shockwave, and draining trinket and it may seem like you're not doing any damage.

As a warrior, I usually die if I get caught in the open with a frost nova stun and burned down with frost beam. But it looks like a lot of the high ranked mages don't even use frost beam, so who knows!

[CarnivorousDeathParrot.2]

Well, well. . . I just lost to one of these (the 4th so far).

I've checked. . . no block rating in any equipment piece. Regular offensive stats with vitality and armor here and there.
Either LoH is the key or it's a glitch.
I find the former hard to believe because then you'd at least see the life total moving in the 95%-100% range, at some point, rather than frozen stuck at 100%.

[CarnivorousDeathParrot.2]

Confirmed it is not LoH.

Looking at my statistics, I beat warriors with high LoH all the time. Or, even when I lose, "frozen" life bars are only seen when this shield is involved. . . sometimes.

[Windthin]

The AI also can attack you from offscreen, which is infuriating.

[Edd]

This might be some kind of bug, because when I use encrypted shield I definitely still die. But I have fought a couple other warriors, one with relatively low toughness ~8M that basically stayed at full life, and another with higher toughness ~12M that I did kill.

Small sample size, but it leads me to think there is some bug with how the shield is calculated.

[Windthin]

This might be some kind of bug, because when I use encrypted shield I definitely still die. But I have fought a couple other warriors, one with relatively low toughness ~8M that basically stayed at full life, and another with higher toughness ~12M that I did kill.

Small sample size, but it leads me to think there is some bug with how the shield is calculated.

Not sure what it is, but it seems like some warrior players have seemed to figure out a way to be invulnerable, too. I just lost to one with a third of my champion levels; I was only once able to make the smallest of dents in their health bar.

[CarnivorousDeathParrot.2]

Finally ran into another one of these.
Health bar frozen at max.
Nothing conspicuous in the on paper stars.
Looks like the last patch did not fix it.

[Edd]

Koreajia did this to me. Nothing especially crazy about his gear. I can beat similarly geared warriors. See combat stats for absorbed damage was over 10x mine.

[Kardinaal]

The way the encrypted shield works is as follows if I remember well.

Think of the forcefield you get from the shield as a second life bar. This life bar caps at 1/4th of your toon’s life. At the start of the fight this life bar is empty. Blocking gives a chance to “heal”, so with every block you get a certain ammount of “life” in the forcefield. How much you heal per proc, is dependant on LoH.

So every attack you do has a chance to be blocked and turn into life for the opponent (no matter how damaging the attack is). So this is dependent on block %, some unknown x% chance for the block to proc a forcefield which life depends on LoH. From these numbers you could mathemagically determine how much life on average goes into the shield with every attack you do. This would be the goal, your attacks would need to outdamage that number.

So the best way to beat this build, would be a build with high “quality” of attacks, each attack has to do decent damage cause each attack adds to the opponent shield. Some active skills should be avoided because they do their damage in lots of small attacks rather than one big boom, like the mages fire and frost circle spells and frost beam. I assume bh traps work the same, no idea on snipe. Also multishot, arcane bolt whirlwind,… split up your damage in multiple hits that can each be blocked. Skills like fireball, explosive shot, rending slash, leap,… split up your damage in components that can all be blocked individually (x dmg to the target, x dmg in a radius, x bleed damage,… all hit separately). Effects like storm of swords also fall into this low damage per hit cathegory.

So the ideal counter build would have a standard attack that does high damage per hit (without extra dmg sources), one hit skills that do high damage, preferably with a burst damage/boost component. Extra care needs to be taken to not have any low damage per hit damage sources from gear (some enchantments and charms add dot procs that can be blocked for example). A good example of this would be a shield warrior with frenzy, shield block, Deadly throw, Devastate. All high damage per hit attacks, no “small” attack components, and enough tank to fight this endurance fight.

Hope this explains why some builds get utterly destroyed against encrypted shield. What most surprises me, is that you don’t see any wizards running encrypted shield. It should go nicely together with fire Lilly builds that have the room for LoH and block on gear.