THE STATE OF PLAY: Whatever happened to the Shielded Crusader?

Whatever did happen to shields? I remember in the pre-Monster Power patches, a good sacred shield with mainstat, vit, ARes and crit would fetch MILLIONS on the open market. Everybody needed one - even decked out CMWW wizards would discreetly stash a board in their bags, just in case they ran across something seriously life threatening.

"Look at teh shield wearing noob LAWL"

Now? Sword and board is basically a thing of the past, gone the way of the dodo, dial-up internet, and Dennis Rodman. Except probably in high level Hardcore play, there's just no call for using a shield anymore. How did we get to this state of affairs?

MOAR PEW PEW, LESS QQ: The advent of increased drop rates was one of the factors in lowering the popularity of the shield. Back in Ye Olde Daeys of the early Diablo 3 patches, the shield represented the best option for survivability and possibly increased damage output. In those days, dropping a quiver or a mojo that actually had the correct mainstat AND vit was the equivalent of winning 4 numbers at the Powerball, never mind having it drop with crit and a useful skill mod. Furthermore, all such offhand items were class restricted, meaning your fresh 60 witch doctor could drop a Tal Rasha's orb and do nothing but weep or sell it at the AH. On the other hand, EVERYONE can use a shield, and those dropped everywhere, like roaches in an episode of Billy The Exterminator. 

Better drop rates put paid to the glory days of the shield. A bottom-of-the-barrel Dead Man's Legacy has  MINIMUM guaranteed stats of 170 Dex AND Vit, not to mention the free hate regen, 9 crit minimum and skill mod. At the time of this writing, that particular quiver would cost you, oh, 20k gold. To look anything like that, a shield would probably have to use 3 mods (mainstat, vit, and a mainstat+vit roll) to get there, and roll near perfect +crit. It can get a skill mod, but it's highly unlikely the skill will match the mainstat, and it can't even roll hate regen. And I haven't even started talking about, say, a Thing of the Deep or a Triumvirate, both of which are similar options for their respective classes.

According to D3MaxStats, rare shields can only roll 2 offensive stats - crit chance and bonus damage vs. elites. The rest of its mod table is filled with all sorts of defensive affixes, not to mention clogged up with such great options like Thorns and bonus exp. On the other hand, a random rare source or mojo will come with a damage bonus, which is a huge boost to your dps when paired with a crit mod. It can also roll bonus damage vs. elites, as well as some indirect damage aids like AP on crit and Max AP. A quiver, on the other hand, replaces the bonus damage with IAS, which amounts to the same thing on your sheet. With that in mind, you can begin to see why shields generally languish in the dusty back shelf of the AH.

Well put, señor Gold Hat

DIE LESS, NOOB: The other side of the coin that flattened shields is the changed gameplay of Diablo 3. This portion can be summed up in three factors - Monster Power, lower death penalties, and efficiency.

Efficiency is the new buzzword that defines much of the farming attitude in D3 nowadays. Before MP, it was an achievement to just be able to kill an elite in act 2, much less manage to survive a series of them. Nowadays, it's not IF you can kill them, it's how fast you can kill them. Shields have little place in such playstyles, especially in solo games. You've got no business doing the Alkaizer run if you need a shield to just get through the first 5 Neph stacks - better to grab as much dps and movespeed as you can and plow through everything. Monster Power ties into efficiency; if a particular MP setting is too hard to survive without a shield, you're better off just lowering the MP until you can pull it off with a real dps gear set. Despite the increased Exp and loot bonuses of the higher settings, it's generally agreed that faster killing earns better rewards in the long run than stubborn slogging through elites via high defense.

Lowered penalties for dying is the third factor - one of the big reasons for keeping a shield on circa 1.03 and below was that dying was just. A pain. In the neck. One careless mistake with elites could cost you all the gold you've earned on the run, not to mention having to fight the pack again at full hit points, not to mention the longer resurrection durations each time you took a dirt nap. The incentive to just not die was all-consuming. Now, that's all gone, and while that's a good thing in my opinion, it's helped to render the humble shield relegation to the vendor and salvage bin.

Yeah, I'd pay 100m for one of THOSE shields

So what are shields for nowadays? I've seen and heard of them used mostly on Hardcore, as well as Softcore Uber boss runs. Certainly in party boss runs, there's less incentive for sacrificing everything in exchange for hard dps, and it pays to persuade the barbarian or monk to strap on a shield. Having one party member, preferably a melee (with the inherent 30% melee damage reduction) have better survivability is a good idea against Ubers. This allows the other members to focus on dealing damage, and allows the shield user to serve as a hedge against accidents (read - running into Rakanoth's slice teleport). Basically, the shield using character is more likely to survive, and thus be able to raise any team mates that have fallen during the fight.

Still, this is a rather niche role, and let's face it - most Diablo 3 players couldn't care less about such tactics and just want to faceroll, especially if they're playing barbs to begin with. A possible solution would be to let shields roll another offensive stat at a smaller amount; hopefully this would close the damage gap from something like a 50% dps loss to something like a 15% - 20% loss, making it more attractive to players and promoting better build and gear diversity. Again, who knows - patches can change things drastically, and we may yet see shields come back to the forefront of gearing.