‘@Diablo made a couple of other replies today, on game issues.
[blue]Will set items and legendary items be dyeable? –A_question_4_D3
Indeed. –Diablo
How come there are no characters who can wear a shield in Diablo 3 (we exclude the barbarians, they are not shield friendly) –Hard2Kur
All classes can use shields in Diablo III. 🙂 Monk was questionable for a time, but they can now also use shields. –Diablo[/blue]
Why were Monk shields questionable? Let’s refresh our memories from the DiabloWiki.net shields article, shall we?
[blue]Bruce Lee would not use a shield, and neither would the monk. –Bashiok[/blue]
That post was in April 2010. Not four months later, we saw the [wiki]Monk[/wiki] star in the [wiki]Artisan Video[/wiki]… using a shield. Things do tend to change quickly, during game development.
Come to think of it, a “system” reveal about shields and blocking in D3 wouldn’t go amiss.
None of the developers have ever spoken about shields, but from what we can see in item hovers, D3’s shields are greatly changed from D2’s. Shields are no longer complete damage absorb, but instead merely reduce the damage taken by some value. (Bucklers are 6-10.) We don’t know anything about how blocking percentage is calculated, what the maximum values for absorb or percentage are, how blocking speed or recovery work, what sort of mods will be found on shields, what other methods have been included to make two-handed weapons more viable, etc. And sadly, I doubt we’ll find out until players do some testing and reporting come the beta.