[Iron]

I think damage shields need to be put on the normal damage scale. Currently NR/AC/Resistances play no part in the damage calculation. I cannot say anything about vulnerabilities or immunities as I don't play a class/race with those, but I would guess that they don't factor in either.

IMO these are highly unbalanced. Mainly there is the big division between those with evasion and those without. Those with evasion generally don't even seem to notice the shields (and ironically are mostly the same classes that have the most ways to naturally avoid shield... spells). For classes that do not have any damage component other than melee (a.k.a everything you do is subject to shields) the shields are a big "F*&# you" sign. Against very large mobs with shields, those classes are just screwed. Raise your hand if you have killed the Proginator in DS solo and didn't have evasion or offensive spells... how much health does it require? Taking 20k damage while assisting someone else who was tanking the Proginator tells me that it requires a boatload of health (ironically, that 20k was more than the person tanking took because they had evasion).

From what I remember of the early days of Nodeka (feel free to correct me if I am wrong), the shields were implement this way because the discrepancies in melee damage between fighters and casters was significant, pools were quite small, and PvP was full damage. Casters couldn't get enough spells off to be able to keep up with melee damage in the very few rounds the fight lasted (thus the >100% change was originally implemented also).

A lot has changed since then. PvP is 1/2 damage. Equipment was changed/reduced (not to mention SU and Crafted) so the discrepancies between fighter and caster melee is much smaller (if any in some cases), and people can get off 5+ spells in a single round in some cases (compared to 1/round in the old days).

So much about the combat system has changed over the years. The damage balance switched from melee to spells years ago. Yet this aspect, which originally was needed for balance, has stayed exactly the same and causes imbalance in the opposite direction.

There is no reason to keep the shields out of the normal combat system. From a purely logical perspective it doesn't make sense anyway. With resistances/NR you can take a fireball as if it were a candle flame, but hit a flame shield at sword's distance and you're burnt to a crisp??? A thoe with resist all takes the same damage from a flame shield as an Arctic Colossus with fire vulnerability???

Not asking to get rid of them entirely, just asking to have the normal damage calculations applied (AC/NR/Resistances/Vulnerabilities).