Just curious. Shields and ranged attacks

If this forum had a random question sticky I'd have posted this there, as it doesn't really warrant its own thread. Maybe we should make one?

Anyway, I've always wondered why it is, despite being a plain physical attack, that ranged attacks cannot be blocked with a shield?

It just seems kinda odd that you can't considering one of the primary uses of shield has always been defending against projectile attacks. I can catch a giant Gigas axe and stop it cold, but arrows and rocks just hit me in the face? <,<;

I doubt this will be getting changed at this point, but I'm curious if that was intentional, or just something that got overlooked.

Kinda similar to why a RA should always remove a shadow when there is one?
RA mechanics are kinda weird TBH.

As a shadow user this has always annoyed me as well. Kind of how perfect dodge doesn't dodge ranged attacks either. As a THF a mob can normally shoot away at me without any kind of shadows and I can avoid 90% of them, but the moment I throw up shadows the RA's seem to get a 100% accuracy bonus. Its ridiculous.

Even though I play Ranger I feel ranged attacks should really have the same evasion/shield/guard/parry formula as normal melee attacks. It's just an attack from farther away.

I don't know about guard, or evasion mechanics with shadows up vs. ranged attacks(none of my jobs can guard, or evade worth a damn) but you can parry ranged attacks. It just shows as a miss in the log, just like when you parry a WS. so the only way to even tell it was a parry is if you got a skill up.

This makes it seem even stranger that you can't block ranged attacks. I can swat an arrow outta the air with my weapon, but I can't put a huge ass shield in front of me and let them bounce off?

You can also parry counters. In which case the counter doesn't happen at all. you just swing at the mob and get a parry skill up. Took me a bit to figure out what that was the first time it happened.

It'd be nice if the chat log was a bit more accurate about what's really happening. Like blocking, for example. I'd be really happy if it showed in the log when we blocked an attack. Rather than having to watch your model or analyze the damage taken. It would make measuring block rates so much easier. Might actually finally develop a formula for block rate according to shield type+skill vs monster level.

It's even stranger that you can't block arrows with a shield because of the fact that that's one of the primary uses actual shields.

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Originally Posted by Charismatic

It's even stranger that you can't block arrows with a shield because of the fact that that's one of the primary uses actual shields.

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Yeah, I mentioned that.

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Originally Posted by Martel

It just seems kinda odd that you can't considering one of the primary uses of shields has always been defending against projectile attacks. I can catch a giant Gigas axe and stop it cold, but arrows and rocks just hit me in the face? <,<;

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Originally Posted by Martel

If this forum had a random question sticky I'd have posted this there, as it doesn't really warrant its own thread. Maybe we should make one?

Anyway, I've always wondered why it is, despite being a plain physical attack, that ranged attacks cannot be blocked with a shield?

It just seems kinda odd that you can't considering one of the primary uses of shield has always been defending against projectile attacks. I can catch a giant Gigas axe and stop it cold, but arrows and rocks just hit me in the face? <,<;

I doubt this will be getting changed at this point, but I'm curious if that was intentional, or just something that got overlooked.

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Effective ranged attacks are expensive, usually costing bullets, arrows, shurikens - so perhaps the developers wanted to give these types of attacks an advantage over other types of attacks to help make them more worthwhile. Would really suck if you were corsair having all your expensive bullets knocked away by a paladin with a shield, so in a way it makes sense.

I'd think they get wasted far more by simple evasion than by shield blocking. Or mobs with shadows for that matter. Even if an attack is blocked, it'll still do some dmg, and thus still gain TP. Not a complete waste of ammo. Really, the same argument could be made against guard, or parry. Yet parry,at least(I can't speak for guard) can proc on ranged attacks, it just shows in the log as a simple miss(getting a skill up is the only way to tell).

Besides, the times where a mob blocking is even applicable are few and far between. Of all pld type mobs, only beastmen actually wear shields and can block. And only some of them even have shields. In those few cases RNG(or whatever ranged DD) could circumvent this entirely by simply moving behind the mob.

Ranged attacks extra advantage for being expensive can be found in their DMG mechanics. I'd think fSTR2 and highly stable physical dmg would cover that aspect.

I think it's far more likely that it was either miss-coded overlooked entirely. Or they just wanted an extra, rather nonsensical hole in PLD's defenses.

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Originally Posted by Martel

I'd think they get wasted far more by simple evasion than by shield blocking. Or mobs with shadows for that matter. Even if an attack is blocked, it'll still do some dmg, and thus still gain TP. Not a complete waste of ammo. Really, the same argument could be made against guard, or parry. Yet parry,at least(I can't speak for guard) can proc on ranged attacks, it just shows in the log as a simple miss(getting a skill up is the only way to tell).

Besides, the times where a mob blocking is even applicable are few and far between. Of all pld type mobs, only beastmen actually wear shields and can block. And only some of them even have shields. In those few cases RNG(or whatever ranged DD) could circumvent this entirely by simply moving behind the mob.

Ranged attacks extra advantage for being expensive can be found in their DMG mechanics. I'd think fSTR2 and highly stable physical dmg would cover that aspect.

I think it's far more likely that it was either miss-coded overlooked entirely. Or they just wanted an extra, rather nonsensical hole in PLD's defenses.

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I dunno... maybe, but I would think if it were an error in the code they would have gotten around to fixing it by now. It's been like that forever

I'm sure we've got plenty of age old glitches floating around still. The issue with this one is sometimes its hard to tell whether you can block something, or if your block rate's just really bad. Then there's the fact that the only way to tell you blocked(aside from extra TP gain) is the dmg itself. So you have to do a dmg comparison in the middle of whatever else you're doing. But the biggest factor, most likely, is that we don't know if this is a glitch. It may fall under the dreaded "Working as intended". It seems silly to me that this would be intentional, but there's no way to tell but to ask.

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Originally Posted by Martel

I'm sure we've got plenty of age old glitches floating around still. The issue with this one is sometimes its hard to tell whether you can block something, or if your block rate's just really bad. Then there's the fact that the only way to tell you blocked(aside from extra TP gain) is the dmg itself. So you have to do a dmg comparison in the middle of whatever else you're doing. But the biggest factor, most likely, is that we don't know if this is a glitch. It may fall under the dreaded "Working as intended". It seems silly to me that this would be intentional, but there's no way to tell but to ask.

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Ranged attacks also always take shadows, or at least they did unless they have changed it while i was away.

Certainly, an oddity. While I doubt SE will act on any of this at this point, it'd be nice if they did. Maybe we'll see blockable ranged attacks(and evasion will function normally vs them with shadows up) next update. /dreams.

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Originally Posted by Dale

Ranged attacks also always take shadows, or at least they did unless they have changed it while i was away.

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There are exceptions. I know for sure Yagudo NINs in Dyanmis - Windurst and Fomor NINs can miss with ranged attacks while shadows are up. Dunno if its a NIN job thing though.

Edit: As others have said not being able to block ranged attacks with a shield is really dumb imo.