As some people know, I'm creating my own "pet game". I'm looking for help to balance all the battle items in the game.

Most of the balancing depends on shields and blockers and how many icons they defend against or % blocked. I'm not sure if I should just mix everything up randomly (this would make for pretty random battling and people would need a very diversified set to cover all angles) OR I could create each item/icons 1 at a time and make an item to counter the previous item.

The thing about the shields and blocking is I read somewhere from a top BDer that "shields" are pretty useless in Neopets battling. I want to make shielding in my game relevant so more strategy is involved.

Any pros have some advice?