Creature shields/foci and their uses

1st Official Post

    I’ve seen a fair few pcs and wts threads with creature armor mods, and certainly the shields seem very popular. I think we can all agree they are pretty cool.

    Obviously demon shields are useful for DOA. Undead shields for SoO and FoW presumably. And the big kicker here is that they don’t drop on insc shields. But giants/ogres for example, can still fetch 10a plus with a good skin. Dwarves and charr as well, perhaps even more than this. Dragons seems utterly useless to me, but will still fetch a decent amount. Just interested in where the market for these other creatures comes from - is it just collections, or are these actually useful?

    Also for a caster, would a focus these mods be better, or is the +8 from the shield better than the +12 energy. Given you can sneak in a 20% HCT or HSR if you’re lucky. Are these underappreciated?

    I think charr and dwarves are very usefull in sc; farms, chestrun too

    Edit. Hope some one will give good examples

    • Official Post

    A lot of it is collecting purposes and anecdotally certain mods seem to just be very rare. Dwarves, Tengu, and Giants are very uncommon as drops in my experience.

    Useful mods as you mention are things like Demons which are a huge advantage and same with plants for urgoz among a few others. I think realistically anet just never fleshed out the uses of some of these mods or better yet the player base never found a meta use at least not anymore.

    Tengu farming at release was huge on warriors outside riverside province prenerf where a tengu shield was a prized farming weapon. Giants was actually the same scenario when farming ettins in north kryta was big, hill giants at the end of riverside province, and sand giants in the crystal desert. Giants mod was also quite useful for droks run and same with dwarf.

    Dwarves was quite popular during the early days as well since stone summit were some of the nastiest end game mobs. Dwarf gear was quite big into the Sorrows furnace farming days as well. Even today dwarves is still quite useful for chest running and slaver's exile farms.

    Pretty much all the creature shields even today have some decent use although the most common and least useful of mods would be dragons followed by ogres. There are just so little of those mobs in the game but I am sure some speed clear situations have made them useful to a tiny extent.

    Onto the caster gear with creature mods they are even more stupid rare to land perfect but not as valuable. More of a collecting thing although I have some very specialized solo farms that use them. I find farming on VWK rit that a focus with +10 vs creature and +30 health can be optimal if I have a large cast stack as I run into aggro. This again is getting into super specialized uses and also finding one with dual useful mods is quite a task. I do consider them underappreciated overall.

    Bonus: The rarest shield combo in my opinion that still drops would be +10 vs creature +1 attribute 20%.

    Throwing in my two cents as well, yeah ogres/dragons seems to be the most common. Curiously, though, don't ogre mods only drop in factions? Factions has yetis (ogres) sure, but prophecies also has ettins, which are classified as ogres. Guess someone could use them for nostalgic ettin farming. Or an ogre shield for Darkrime Delves running, as jotun count as ogres as well.

    As for OP's question of whether a focus "shield" or a shield is "better," I mean I guess a shield would be better, but it depends on the application and what's using it. Energy can be plentiful depending on build & other stuff being used, perhaps more so than extra sources of armor.

    That said, I have a couple paper lantern "shields" but realistically they are just there as collection pieces.

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    Thanks all - it was my perception that only a couple of these mods were useful, when actually it seems that only a couple of them are actually useless.

    Are these mods more common drops in factions? My gut feeling is that they are. And what drops where? Are anti charr shields more likely to drop from charr?

    Kind of interesting these mods never made it onto green weapons apart from in DOA.

    Few things about the drops not sure if it has been said above but spun and unholy gave pretty detailed answer.

    Vs demon / dragon drop only in the faction campaign

    Vs dwarves / charr drop only in proph

    Not too sure about undead/ giant / trolls / tengus this is for PyroLobster / Kabong @yoji to answer they would know the best.

    The mods on the shield arent related to the foe or chest you drop it from.

    So basically : a stone summit foe in shiverpeak has as much chance to drop a +10 charr or a +10 dwarves / undead / giant etcetc...

    Cheers

    Interesting that only undead drops in uw/fow. An odd distinction to make. Where these areas there at release?

    I knew this already, but weird that tengu doesn’t drop in Cantha. I wonder why they reduced the numbers so drastically in factions, despite adding demons pretty much only for Oni. Naga or dredge would have been pretty low hanging fruit.

    Anyway thanks all, you have answered my questions! I shall wish for that elusive +1 fire +10 vs charr magmas or +1 air vs tengu shield or focus…

    Have covered the prenerf exceptions to creature stuff here including the undead only in UW/FoW:

    (Page 16)

    Thread

    Does it exist?

    This was an old and huge topic guru, so let's get it started on legacy :D



    My first question is about a req smite 20/20 smite OS offhand. Afaik the only OS monk offhand req smite is the hallowed idol (Right?)

    So, has anyone seen such an item or heard of it?
    kasperkarre
    July 23, 2016 at 10:06 PM

    There is lots of additional stuff that makes no sense. The one I cant never wrap my head around is the skeleton mod. All skeletons in the game are undead but not all undead are skeletons so its kinda a pointless addition (apart from looking really cool). Chalk it up to Guild Wars 1 items system being a bloody mess :)

    Quote from Jonast

    Anyway thanks all, you have answered my questions! I shall wish for that elusive +1 fire +10 vs charr magmas or +1 air vs tengu shield or focus…

    Don't have those combos but you might like one of these. I am particularly fond of the Dragon +1 Fire ones.

    IGN: Pyro Loves Lobsters

    That curses undead gloom is hawt. A shield worthy of grenth himself.

    Quote from PyroLobster

    Have covered the prenerf exceptions to creature stuff here including the undead only in UW/FoW:

    (Page 16)

    Oh that is super weird. There is no logic. Why not keep plants in fow? There are frikkin plants there! Gw1 equipment system is a mess but look at what is has created.

    The reason I like the air/tengu combo is that tengu are weak to lightning damage. Fire/plants or smiting/undead would be good combos too 🙂

    Some creature mods are more useful than others, but no mod is ever useless, I'm convinced. It's just about the number of use cases and their popularity. This goes for both shields and foci. (Also Jonast please keep in mind usefulness and price are not related in gw)

    But yea, why exactly these creatures were created as mod options is a mystery. I get the charr/dwarves/undead/plants/demons, as they were the main enemies during some part of a campaign's storyline. But giants, come on... There are so few and none of them are important to the game in any way.

    About skeletons, at least those were worked out a little bit more, like extra armor against piercing dmg, it's logical (hence also the necro bonelace insignia). I suspect that the skeleton mod idea appeared earlier in the development process, and anet didn't bother to remove it once undead was implemented.

    Quote from Spun Ducky

    The rarest shield combo in my opinion that still drops would be +10 vs creature +1 attribute 20%.

    That's not a matter of opinion. And even without the "opinion" part, that statement is false. It's not even second rarest.

    >WTB< | ign Adanel Jade

    You guys need to specify the +10 creature type to make stats, also are we talking only perfect or we take +1/19 +9 ar vs creatures...

    My thinking on this if we talk perfect only :

    As stated by pyro +10 undead drops only in uw/fow,

    But faction has 4 creature types mods for shield

    Which means that a +10armor vs creature is more likely to drop in faction than in uw if am right ?

    Never less +10 ar creature +1/20% is a swaggy and rare combo we all agree on that.

    I don't know about the rarest but the most comon perfect combo with creatures are then for sure : -2 ench / stance / -3hex / 20% disease etc as they only drop perf on gold items... Which is probably why +10 creature +x hp ench stance etc... Have usually higher prices than their -2 ench stance sister combo.

    I think +10 ar creature + 60/45 hex/stance/ench are probably the rarest combo if we talk perfect. Cause they have 5 variations (hex +56-57-58-59-60hp right for exemple ?).


    When unconditional have 4 (+27...+30)

    When +1/20 have only 2 variations. Which should make it more common (again if we talk perfect and if we dont specify creature nor magic on the +1/20)

    Stats are needed to say anything as we don't know if is there is more chance to drop a mod rather than another in the algorithm.

    Fun question to end PyroLobster Praise you guys might be able to answer this :

    Were +10ar creature +10 ar element a combo possible back in prenerf days like for dual reduce shield ? I never seen one

    Quote from Blind Was My Fury

    Were +10ar creature +10 ar element a combo possible back in prenerf days like for dual reduce shield ? I never seen one

    no. That was never possible. The -2wS mod was a category by itself and hence could drop with other damage reduction mods. Hence all dualreduction shields have the -xwS as one of the two.

    Concerning the other parts of your post: as long as we do not know the mechanics of items stats generated there is no way to tell if one or the other is more likely just because one of them has more potential outcomes. So we'd need some serious statistical efforts in order to determine those.

    I WTB all kinds of Tower Shields and Defenders. I do drop research - if you find anything remarkable or want to see the results - check the thread or send a pm!

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