Shield Defense
Shields are very important in the olympiad for some classes at the olympiad, and all of them have three status, which are the Evasion Penalty (-8 points), Shield Defense Rate (20 points), and the Shield Defense Power, that changes according to the shield's grade and enchantment. Despite these status, there is one more factor that very important about the shield defense, which is the attack direction against the character wielding a shield.
Evasion Penalty
As I said above, all shields have a penalty of -8 evasion points on your character, and this a lot when we talk about evasion, but for most classes it's worth losing it, especially for mages, because they already have a lower evasion. Usually, it's not worth losing these evasion points only when you wear light clothing sets, mostly when playing on daggers or archers, because they can easily evade normal physical attacks without a shield.
Shield Defense Rate
The shield defense rate is the chance you have of defending a physical damage, although it is not a percentage. For all shields this value is 20 points, but it adds with the natural ability of shield defense from the class, and some of them have this value higher because of their skills, mostly tanker classes because of Shield Mastery, Shield Fortress and Guard Stance. It is also possible to increase this value with two buffs, which are Bless Shield (Hierophant and Eva's Saint) and Under The Protection of Pa'agrio (Dominator).
This Dominator's buff increases the shield defense rate a little less, which is 50% at the last level, while the Bless Shield buff gives 80% of increase at the last level. Also, the shields defense rate depends on the direction of the attack, and it works only against physical damage, excluding physical skills from daggers, Duelists, Ghand Khavataris and skills that completely ignores the shield.
In the main configuration shields doesn't work against magical skills and those skills I quoted above, despite this, on some java servers the shields defenses are coming too high and they are working even against magical skills lately, so it's better to test it in the server you're playing.
Shield Defense Power
This is the only status that changes between shields, according to their respective grade and enchantment, although it's shown as Physical Defense, it doesn't increase your character's physical defense, instead it works in the calculation of how much damage the shield will absorb from a physical attack, when the attack doesn't get completely annulated. The only skill that can change this value despite the Shield Mastery, is a buff called Advanced Block that increases it by 100% in the last level, from the Eva's Saint class.
Shield Defense Direction
This is the most important thing about shields, they only work when the physical attack comes straight to the front or left side of the character, since the shield is wielded by the left hand. It seems like the shields defenses works like a wall aligned with the shield position (180 angle degrees), so it's very important that when you make tests about a shield, you hit the character at this direction. The only skill that can change this, is the toggle called Aegis Stance from the Phoenix Knight class, which allows a shield to work on all directions.
Possible Shield Defenses
After understanding all of this, we have four possible defenses for a physical damage result in a character wielding a shield that receives a physical attack on the shield direction, which are:
- Shield is Ignored: Shield defenses doesn’t work at all and the character receives the complete physical damage, it might be a normal or critical damage like in the image.
- Partial Shield Defense: Shield defense power works and the physical damage is partially reduced by the shield, it works against normal and critical damage. The image shows the first and third hit being a normal physical damage, while the second one (223 damage) got reduced by the shield defense power.
- Complete Shield Defense: Shield defense rate works and the physical damage is completely annulated, it works against normal, critical and reflected damage. When your hit is completely annulated it shows 1 damage for you, and when your shield works against the opponent’s damage it shows the message “Your shield defense has succeeded”.
- Attack is Evaded: Shield defenses doesn’t work at all, and the character evaded the physical damage, showing the “You have missed” message. It’s very rare on characters with a shield and it happens only against normal physical damage, evasion doesn’t work against damage caused by physical skills like the ones from daggers, Duelists and Grand Khavataris.