Plus getting better stats = more comms, no?

Shieldsmash should take longer to break the shield, so the shield user has the time to unwield his shield and grab a weapon to parry with instead, since shieldriposte is an unfair advantage against knights.

Dilute should just vanish alltogether, since it's inevitable.

A vial of health only costs about 425 gold, so that is a lot less expensive than a new shield. If you are going to support shield smash and telling people they can stow their shield to stop it, then you should also be willing to support dilute. All the person has to do is only keep one mana and one health out of his pack, those would only cost 850 gold to replace if diluted.

I will make myself clear on this subject. If even one attempt is made to smash my shield, I will be sure to dilute that person every time he crosses my path. That also goes for if he tries to smash my shield while we are in the arena, I will dilute him the next time we cross each other’s path. If you feel that paying money to replace a shield over and over again is fine, then I will make sure you pay dearly for the pleasure of breaking my shield.

Yeah, they're both abilities with only one goal, causing grief.

so you think having a chance of passively stunning someone everytime they attack is fair? -.-

and summer answer is no

It's the stats on the shield that make it valuable. It takes some time to come out with stats like that, unless you get lucky, or your name is Ixion. But all of that aside, shieldriposte is strong and shieldbash is fine. It shouldn't destroy the shield in the arena and blademasters should have an equivalent.

It is passive, so the person wielding the shield does not control it. It is not that bad, since a person hitting parry rarely causes the shield to riposte. Shield riposte is no where near as bad as hitting a monk's guarding in Achaea, so why is it such a problem here in Lusternia? Every time you hit the point a monk had guarded, you would be stunned and thrown to the ground. Here it is not a guaranty that hitting a person's shield parry will cause a riposte to fire.

Smashing the shield is a deliberate act. A stun from the shield may slow your attack, but destroying the shield will decrease your opponent's defense and cause financial harm. It seems that warriors are able to surge and pretty much double their health. To overcome that extreme increase in health, an aquamancer could use dilute to decrease the warrior’s sip by half. Unfortunately, using dilute will also cause financial harm to the warrior. A diluted warrior would then have to pour out and refill all of his diluted vials of mana and health.

If people do not see a problem with the first situation, then they should not see a problem with the second situation. If people see a problem with one, then they must see a problem with the other. If no, then they are allowing their own bias to rule their decision making process and in turn are being hypocrites.

Most of the people have a few things in their pack, so you can only put around 30-40 vials in the pack. Some people have more than that. Playing with few packs in not fun
I can't imagine that some aquamancer comes to me on astral, dilutes my, let's say, 100 vials and runs away, just to piss me off. And I can do nothing about it. I hope no such idiot becomes aquamancer, this skill's potential for harming anyone out of the blue is huge.

Yes it is, and that is why I am against its use. Yet, I will use it on anyone who decides he would like to grief me. If a person decides they want to make me pay for a new shield, I will be sure to make sure he has to pay for some health and mana refills.

I wasn't supporting shieldsmash just clearing up the cost of a shield Everyone should be able to find someone that forges for free especially in your own city/commune. Dilute and Shieldsmash are both cheap, if the person you're attacking has the skills to retaliate with a shield, deal with it.

Leaving just one of each vial out to avoid dilute is rather pointless by the time you get new ones out bam you're diluted again.

I rarely get lucky forging.. I just put serious time into the forgings. Anyway, the iron shield design is cheap to reforge because it's a Dreadhelm ONLY pattern, which means only a handful can make them to begin with. Like Malicia said, it's not the design that makes it expensive, it's the stats. True enough an average shield can be as low as 5k, but a really good shield can go for 6-8k easily.

They probably have better things to do than kill off 2 vials at a time at a cost of 3 power.