A little off topic, but there's so many insiders here right now, who might know:

Malice: Is the Curse activation tier based (now)? My little one grew into using it, but the curse ist obstinate. I'm actually used for it to come with every use.

Also, been wondering for a while now - didn't Malice initially have a freeze option as well? Or am I hallucinating, because I modded it with freeze Baguettes right away? 2008 seems like a full lifetime ago...

SB says, Rapier of Error's curse only lasts 4 turns - wasn't that longer?

Malice curse activation is not tier based and it never had a chance to freeze.

[Edit]

I've been battling with the golden goddess shield for a while now with all different pet builds (high def, high strength, high health, etc) and the only situation where it really comes out useful is when healing is completely disabled. In all other scenarios against tough but beatable opponents, the shield is impractical. Even when modded, battles with the shield last so long that either your opponent has the opportunity to boost so high that they pummel you through the base defense, have the opportunity to curse/freeze you to death because the battles last so long or you were better off sacrificing the chance at added defense by eating the hits with weapons that heal but do more damage. Could one of the following updates be made?

1. Add a small base attack to the shield
2. 5-6 mod slots to allow users to add attack damage
3. Add curse damage with the same activation rate as the blessing

It might have, I know that before the 2009 revamp it was very different. (I think it had a passive ability that just granted you an extra 250 STR and DEF just for having it in your set.). I don't remember it having a freeze since the 2009 revamp.

Thanks to both of you, for your answer!

Blackmoons War Plate - feels like a big miss for T10. The only way to get this is by spending 1 bil sP in the MC. 30 defense is not enough at T10. A constant 60 block across icons and again adding more mod slots or a base attack would make it a suitable option.

Also why does the Item Hunters Shield get the extra mod slots but not the warplate?

Purge had been saying he thought this would be too busted on Discord. I agree with you though, that 60 across the board is probably what it would need to maybe be viable.

Yeah I don't know why he thinks it's busted. It suffers from the same problems as the golden goddess shield and it doesn't have a blessing to increase the block. If anything, it's worse than the goddess shield. There really is no scenario where this one is useful when all the other shields do more.

What if it changed form by generating a slightly weaker version each use until after a certain # of turns it stays that weaker form for the rest of the battle.

Something OP turn 1 that generates Blackmoons War Plate v2 thats a bit weaker....and so forth until the last form on Use [insert #].

We would lose preselection but it is what it is

I feel like that would be an absolute nightmare to code and a nightmare to battle with. 60 icon block is really not big to take on the imp challengers. If it were 100 icon block, then I think it would be pretty OP.

Just scale the warplate. Maybe 60 block is very high for T10, but it's not when facing impossible level challengers in this current state. Unless there are plans to drastically change the challengers and reduce their attack boost curse freeze heal, I assume the tweaks to the challengers would be limited (because its a lot of work. I hope that's proven wrong).

60 makes me nervous with the t11 and t12 unknowns xD.

It should be similar coding to the briefcase

I think 60x9 is probably still not that great against most opponents. Maybe it would be good against someone like The Mage that uses everything.

I think you bring up an interesting idea for a mechanic though:

Shield XYZ OPB Block 60x9 Generate Shield XYZ

That way it would always cycle to the end of your inventory so that it needs to be an active choice to use it instead of just spamming it against every challenger if I'm wrong and actually is too powerful.

OR

Shield ABC Semi-breakable 5% chance to break block 60x9

That way it would have some spam protection, but could still be reliably be used when low on HP. And theoretically you should get 10-30 uses out of it or so. (5% break might even be too high)

Although, I would also just add that I think its questionable if you need to make any of the shields currently on the market into something like this.

It's not like Warplate is actually worth anything close to a bil, Item Defenders shield can be farmed every 20 days or less, the godess shield can be farmed pretty easily too.

The risk with a powerful shield is that you don't want to make one where the meta just becomes train a 15K defense pet and tank through everything with 1 god weapon + god Shield. (although, I don't think a 9x60 shield would come close to being a god sheild that ruins the meta.)

I don't get why he doesn't let us test it out in the lame duck period here. Just be clear that it's an experiment. He should also probably experiment in the other direction with a hard hitting attacker too.

Yeah how else can we know if we don't test it out

Yes I feel we are shouting into a void of theories. Let us test the 60 icon block across the board (it doesn't even block all icons) against a variety of opponents with pets T10+ and if it is too powerful, change the stats before a reset. I also doubt this is anywhere near godly shield.

It could scale downward off defense to put a ceiling on the block.

Honestly, I'm pretty sure that Lukien and Kain probably already put a huge damper on the idea of going for a low STR high DEF/HP build. You can also just shift the meta to punish those builds as well. (ie 15K DEF low STR)

Surge is a great example with its 333HP heal scroll that was a good damage check for mid level BQs so you couldn't just go crazy with HP forever, or Surge would stop you.

Low tier pets, I think we are starting to realize that high damage probably just have just been the meta all this time. But I think we need more high tier damage check opponents that force us to really try to max damage. I think Forj, Lukien, Careeper, and Kain are the main damage check opponents, where probably 95% of opponents are mitigation checks.

Kain isn't a problem tbh. Lukien (heh heh) could be feasible if you defended long enough for him to burn through all his OP healing potions. Alternatively, it's simple enough to take away half of his full heal potions from the weapon pool.

Surge did not stop my high health pets, but it did take the right weapon combination dependent on build.

I think part of why strength is still better than a defensive build is because of all the shenanigans that opponents have that I think were to compensate for users overhealing, specifically curses and weapons that heal for 1k+ HP. Sophie for example is a real pita because of the amount of curses she can put on you. The damage quickly stacks up and you can't block it. The most effective way to beat her is to do damage as quickly as possible.

were they high health low str? The way I trained, there were definately points where Surge was a brick wall where every other BQ challenger was trivial

Surge was the reason I came up with 8:6:2:1 instead of sitting at 200-300STR and then just straight training HP until like 1500.

Either way my point remains that you can prevent builds from getting too wacky with good STR or mitigcation checks.

One was high health/def, one was high health all even everything else, one was all even and the last werido was high speed. I think it was more of a lack of weapon choices that made it a little tougher, but they all had enough intelligence to fall back on scrolls. That was just my experience through BQs. I don't have surge unlocked so it very well may have become like hitting a brick wall after x wins.