Use a shield soloing?

Gwenev · 03-08-2005, 08:51 PM

Ok, probably a stupid question, but here goes...Like most, I use dual wielding weapons. Other threads have commented on our relative weakness soloing compared to some other archetypes. We can solo, but not as well as some others. Our main problem is we get damaged too quickly IMHO. Seems to me that a big, big chunk of the damage we do soloing is done via HO's. I don't think HO's are any faster with our speedy dual-wield weapons (something I'm unsure of). Would it make more sense to shift to a one-handed weapon and a shield? Anyone have any experience with this?Thanks SMILEY

Sim · 03-09-2005, 12:15 AM

Does anyone know if having a dual wield increases your chance of parrying over a one handed? If not I might be getting me a one handed weapon and a shield because someone in a thread some where showed that the damage is basically the same.

BattleFalc · 03-09-2005, 02:47 AM

I used a carbonite battleaxe with an ash shield for a while, until I got my hands on some steel crescent axes. The agi bonus from those made the switch to shield for added defense much less favourable.... the agi is worth half the AC bonus from the shield.

Kaff · 03-10-2005, 07:26 AM

Gwenevie wrote:Ok, probably a stupid question, but here goes...Like most, I use dual wielding weapons. Other threads have commented on our relative weakness soloing compared to some other archetypes. We can solo, but not as well as some others. Our main problem is we get damaged too quickly IMHO. Seems to me that a big, big chunk of the damage we do soloing is done via HO's. I don't think HO's are any faster with our speedy dual-wield weapons (something I'm unsure of). Would it make more sense to shift to a one-handed weapon and a shield? Anyone have any experience with this?Thanks

I switch it up. If I didn't own a shield for small-group tanking situations, though, I probably wouldn't go out of my way to buy one for soloing.

Shadebring · 03-10-2005, 05:51 PM

Well interestingly enough before the likes of Errol Flynn came on the scene with their sword fencing acrobatic charm and wit etc. the term Swashbuckler was given to those foot troops who fought with a sword and a buckler the 'swash' bit was added to imitate the noise that the buckler made as it was being moved through the air to intercept the various blows from an opponant.

It was quite a popular form of fighting in the early days of fencing when various fencing techniques were being invented and fencing masters sprung up around europe.

Gwenev · 03-10-2005, 09:58 PM

Ok, I tried this out yesterday.

I bought the cheapest shield on the market that was "yellow" to me. Cost me 1g (turns out I'll be able to sell this to an NPC for 1.4g :smileysurprised SMILEY

I dragged Ghoulbane out of it's closet and equiped it for the first time. I then marched off to EL and RV as a level 37 swashie to see what I could learn. Of course, I kept my PGT and feysteel dirk just in case!

Now, I don't have log parsers and I can't show any hard data. Plus, my experience was tempered by dealing with a lot of new mobs in EL that I wan't familiar with.

However, I tried both sword and sheild and my usual dual-wield for most of the day in solo situations.

The difference was not night-and-day. Advanced solo mobs still beat me up plenty good. But, overall, I liked the sword and shield better. Especially against normal solo mobs, I seemed to come out of the fight healthier and the fights weren't any longer than usual. Several times I ended up fighting two blue mobs or a white and a blue mob at the same time and was able to beat them both. Most fights against blue mobs, I would end up at 75 - 80% health and be ready to go again in just a few seconds. Fights against white mobs were not much worse than that.

I'm 38 now, and this morning I trekked off to EF to try out some wolves for the first time. I fought level 41 wolves with my sword and shield and did ok. Scary fights, but I normally ended up with 40 - 50% health unless things went awry. Only fought a few, but I won each fight.

Back in RV, deadly blightrats are still super tough. Was fighting near a level 36 paladin (two levels lower than me), and she could fight a level 37 deadly blightrat and end at 80% health. The same fight for me would get me down to 20% health. So, the sword and shield is not nirvana.

But, I think it's an improvement. It would be interesting to see hard data.

In any case, I think it's helping for me. I recommend trying it out for yourself and seeing how it works for you.

Happy hunting!

Lunette

Naggyba · 03-11-2005, 01:26 AM

I tried the shield and sword thing vs DW and I found basically very little difference, even though the shield added like 400+ AC to me. I came out about the same either way.I also did a test of 1hs vs dual wield and found they were close to the same DPS, as long as I spammed my CAs. Without CAs (I.E. simulating out of power), 1hs sucked royally in DPS vs dual wield.So, to me, it seems for us scouts (or swashbucklers), shields make very little difference.Using dual wield, it seems our parry makes up for lack of shield.

Message Edited by Naggybait on 03-16-2005 12:53 PM

Dave · 03-13-2005, 08:28 PM

I always use a sword and shield when I solo, and I pull the shield out when I get aggro in a group. Most of the damage I do in ANY fight is from my combat arts; I do very little damage auto-attacking. Your arts will do the same damage whether you're attacking with sword and shield, dagger and axe, or rubber chicken and whoopie cushion, and the deflection bonus I get from the round shield lets me live a lot longer so I can USE those arts to kill the mob.

Erasm · 03-17-2005, 02:52 AM

BallardDav wrote:

I always use a sword and shield when I solo, and I pull the shield out when I get aggro in a group. Most of the damage I do in ANY fight is from my combat arts; I do very little damage auto-attacking. Your arts will do the same damage whether you're attacking with sword and shield, dagger and axe, or rubber chicken and whoopie cushion, and the deflection bonus I get from the round shield lets me live a lot longer so I can USE those arts to kill the mob.

Not true. The rubber chicken is grey to me and is severely affecting my combat arts :smileyvery-happy:

Gwenev · 03-17-2005, 10:28 PM

Naggybait wrote:
I tried the shield and sword thing vs DW and I found basically very little difference, even though the shield added like 400+ AC to me. I came out about the same either way.

I also did a test of 1hs vs dual wield and found they were close to the same DPS, as long as I spammed my CAs. Without CAs (I.E. simulating out of power), 1hs sucked royally in DPS vs dual wield.

So, to me, it seems for us scouts (or swashbucklers), shields make very little difference.

Using dual wield, it seems our parry makes up for lack of shield.
Message Edited by Naggybait on 03-16-2005 12:53 PM

Hmmm, I get Parry increases even when using a shield. Are you sure that parry only works when dual-wielding? Or is it known to be better then?

I'm still finding a small benefit to using sword and shield soloing. Again nothing earth-shaking, but it seems a touch better in terms of my final health and doesn't seem noticably slower in the fights.

Ute · 03-18-2005, 01:04 PM

Parry works regardless of what you have equipped from what I can tell. More agility, likewise, seems to increase the frequency of parry. What a shield does add is an additional chance to block. Block is only present if you have a shield or are a brawler fighter with the deflection skill(an innate round shield effect).Over in the combat forums someone posted some pretty detailed combat analysis of a monk vs a berseker of equal levels. What seemed to come out of it was this:All your defense skills appear to work in this orderBlock/Deflection > Parry > DefenseAlso note that defense is the only skill that counts from all sides. Block/Deflect and Parry only work in a 120 degree arc in front of your character.So, a shield sort of acts as an initial defense when you have it equipped. It gives you a small chance to outright block an attack. If it gets past the block, it then rolls to see if you parry. In addition, if you do parry, it rolls to see if you riposte(riposte appears to be like a critical hit for parry).If you don't parry, then it rolls based on your defense skill. If you win, then the attack misses. If you lose, then it hits and AC and armor mitigation take over SMILEY

I imagine the reason why we only see a minor increase in performance with a shield is because we can't really equip a very high level shield. So, we only gain a small chance to block. Combined with our slightly lowered dps, it means at best you'll gain a slight advantage, at worst you'll break even because you'll last longer, but it will take longer to kill the creature at the same time.In either case, I probably wouldn't go with a shield if you are not soloing or tanking. Using a shield otherwise, it might give you a small bonus but it is tiny enough that for us, it really is personal preference.

Naggyba · 03-18-2005, 11:26 PM

Yep, what I saw in my test. Shield made very little difference to me as far as damage taken during a fight and it took longer to kill even spamming CAs. Dual wield for me got me pretty close to same damage taken and mobs died faster.Swashbucklers (or scouts in general) just don't seem to have enough blocking skill to make shields really really useful like the fighter class.

Kaff · 03-19-2005, 01:41 AM

Naggybait wrote:Yep, what I saw in my test. Shield made very little difference to me as far as damage taken during a fight and it took longer to kill even spamming CAs. Dual wield for me got me pretty close to same damage taken and mobs died faster.Swashbucklers (or scouts in general) just don't seem to have enough blocking skill to make shields really really useful like the fighter class.

It should be noted, though, that the shield is slowing down damage taken -- so in small, scout-tanked group situations, the shield will still be an edge, since you're not providing all the damage, but you're providing all the tanking. Which brings up an interesting (to me) question: I wonder if fighters find the same thing, namely that when talking about soloing, shield vs. dual wield (or two-handed) is pretty much a wash.

woo · 03-21-2005, 03:25 AM

im not a swashbuckler, im an assassin but i was reading this and i thought i would throw this in

yesterday i parsed out the diff between the best orange spear/round shield and 2x orange daggers--

the dual wield did 1-3more dps (after 1 hour it was 2.34 more dps)

the shield / 1h wep i took 4% less damage over the course of an hour. (used each for 1 hour, didnt level up.)

so take those numbers and decide. personally i use shield / 1h wep almost all the time mainly for looks, but during solo i prefer the AC.

i know these numbers are coming from an assassin, but i would imagine they are similiar.

edit: oh im a lvl 26 assassin

Message Edited by woode on 03-20-2005 02:28 PM

mike367 · 03-21-2005, 03:49 PM

I find shield useless, I just stopped playing with it all-together. I only attempt to kill blue/sometimes white no arrows if I am feeling lucky. Hardly do I ever engage in multitargets. Anything 3 or more I think is certain death. I feel like the Assasins are really owning up on the dps, seems like they can solo a lot better than us. I for one would like to see a little bit heavier hits coming from the swashie department.

Ramd · 03-23-2005, 08:45 PM

Hm... Now that we have number's for Avoidance, I noticed there are different Sub-catagories for Blocking and Parrying., Can anyone post what thier Avoidance %age is with a Shield and with dual-wielding?

Kaff · 03-24-2005, 02:34 AM

Ramdex wrote:Hm... Now that we have number's for Avoidance, I noticed there are different Sub-catagories for Blocking and Parrying., Can anyone post what thier Avoidance %age is with a Shield and with dual-wielding?

28, using a white-to-me round shield. Legendary, I think, so dropped rather than crafted. Dual wielding and buffed, my avoidance is 54.2%. Swapping out for my shield and axe, I've got 57.7%. Keep in mind that I lose 5 agility in the process, too, though, since I've got more agility on my dual wield weapons than I do on the shield/axe combo. Just looking at with the shield and without it, I'm talking 53.2 vs. 57.5%. So the shield itself (with no agility on it) is worth 4.3% avoidance, or one hit in 23ish. I think we should start wondering why parry doesn't count for much at all (at least as far as we're able to buff it), and we need to be campaigning for some round shield loot with scout stats rather than just priest stat ones. It seems silly to sacrifice a portion of the biggest (adjustable -- defense may be more influential, but it's also very limited in its buffing options) effect on avoidance (agility, despite the nerf) in order to use a more defensive mode of fighting. Agility on shields would be a godsend, at least if they want us to ever use them.

lordalto · 03-24-2005, 05:15 AM

Avoidance is 31%, block is 9.3%, and parry is 24%. The extra 9% makes it worth it to me.

Using a treasured shield. 230 shield factor at level 25.

Viln · 03-24-2005, 05:36 PM

Doesn't having a dual weapon increase your odds of getting a poison on your opponent? Or am I the only one who uses these.

Kaff · 03-25-2005, 06:48 AM

Vilnus wrote:Doesn't having a dual weapon increase your odds of getting a poison on your opponent? Or am I the only one who uses these.

No, parses have demonstrated that proc-per-hit rates are adjusted so that you tend toward a sort of "target proc-per-minute" rate. Thus, no significant difference in proc per minute has been documented based on weapon speed OR weapon type.

Langel · 03-29-2005, 12:54 AM

I would have but they gave me a kite shield for completing the Shiny Brass Shield heritage quest. The light armor classes got bucklers. I'm not sure why we don't get round shields (or bucklers at the very least! Something we could use)...

Turb · 03-30-2005, 12:39 PM

Hmm, good point on the round shields being int/wis not agi imbued.The other thing to remember for fighters is that they have some skills that require a shield, e.g. the 'shield bash' that pallys have that does low damage but builds hate. So for a tank a shield is more than just block%.Where did you get your block and parry %ages from?

3cho · 03-31-2005, 02:51 AM

Ive got to say, this has been one of the most useful threads I've read in a long time. I play a 27 swash, and I've wondered about the differences between using a shied (or not) and whether dw'ing is better than a one hander. I will probably grab a nice shield the next time I come across one, and try it out. Seems like, for the most part, there shouldn't be a significant difference, but it might be interesting to experience.

Foolsfolly · 03-31-2005, 02:54 PM

All of our damage comes from poison, skills, and HO's. Our melee damage, even with great buffs and max haste, is still negligible compared to the poison skills and HO's. So theres really no reason not to use a shield when soloing, it won't slow down your dps and it will definately help out with your defensive posistion.

Turb · 03-31-2005, 08:37 PM

There is a great thread in the brigand area about %age damage breakdown.It seems a brigand who plotted % dam by melee and CA/HO damage saw a split that varied from around 35:65 up to 25:75 for melee : CA/HO. So if you go by 30% damage being done by your melee weapons you're not far off.However, since this guy was using maybe 20 different damage skills over the sample day(s), there is still good value in keeping your dual-wields high quality, as each does 15% of your damage, while the CAs are somewhat diluted (well, I guess Ruse isn't!).

03-09-2005, 12:15 AM	#2
Sim Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 35	Does anyone know if having a dual wield increases your chance of parrying over a one handed? If not I might be getting me a one handed weapon and a shield because someone in a thread some where showed that the damage is basically the same. __________________ Simyr's Photoshop Gallery

03-09-2005, 02:47 AM	#3
BattleFalc Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 2	I used a carbonite battleaxe with an ash shield for a while, until I got my hands on some steel crescent axes. The agi bonus from those made the switch to shield for added defense much less favourable.... the agi is worth half the AC bonus from the shield. __________________ __________________________________________________ ______________________________ Squeek - Ratonga Swashbuckler and Carpenter, currently a resident of Baubbleshire, Lucan DLere.

03-10-2005, 09:58 PM	#6
Gwenev General Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 39	Ok, I tried this out yesterday. I bought the cheapest shield on the market that was "yellow" to me. Cost me 1g (turns out I'll be able to sell this to an NPC for 1.4g :smileysurprised I dragged Ghoulbane out of it's closet and equiped it for the first time. I then marched off to EL and RV as a level 37 swashie to see what I could learn. Of course, I kept my PGT and feysteel dirk just in case! Now, I don't have log parsers and I can't show any hard data. Plus, my experience was tempered by dealing with a lot of new mobs in EL that I wan't familiar with. However, I tried both sword and sheild and my usual dual-wield for most of the day in solo situations. The difference was not night-and-day. Advanced solo mobs still beat me up plenty good. But, overall, I liked the sword and shield better. Especially against normal solo mobs, I seemed to come out of the fight healthier and the fights weren't any longer than usual. Several times I ended up fighting two blue mobs or a white and a blue mob at the same time and was able to beat them both. Most fights against blue mobs, I would end up at 75 - 80% health and be ready to go again in just a few seconds. Fights against white mobs were not much worse than that. I'm 38 now, and this morning I trekked off to EF to try out some wolves for the first time. I fought level 41 wolves with my sword and shield and did ok. Scary fights, but I normally ended up with 40 - 50% health unless things went awry. Only fought a few, but I won each fight. Back in RV, deadly blightrats are still super tough. Was fighting near a level 36 paladin (two levels lower than me), and she could fight a level 37 deadly blightrat and end at 80% health. The same fight for me would get me down to 20% health. So, the sword and shield is not nirvana. But, I think it's an improvement. It would be interesting to see hard data. In any case, I think it's helping for me. I recommend trying it out for yourself and seeing how it works for you. Happy hunting! Lunette

03-17-2005, 02:52 AM	#9
Erasm General Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 246	BallardDav wrote: I always use a sword and shield when I solo, and I pull the shield out when I get aggro in a group. Most of the damage I do in ANY fight is from my combat arts; I do very little damage auto-attacking. Your arts will do the same damage whether you're attacking with sword and shield, dagger and axe, or rubber chicken and whoopie cushion, and the deflection bonus I get from the round shield lets me live a lot longer so I can USE those arts to kill the mob. Not true. The rubber chicken is grey to me and is severely affecting my combat arts :smileyvery-happy:

03-17-2005, 10:28 PM	#10
Gwenev General Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 39	Naggybait wrote: I tried the shield and sword thing vs DW and I found basically very little difference, even though the shield added like 400+ AC to me. I came out about the same either way. I also did a test of 1hs vs dual wield and found they were close to the same DPS, as long as I spammed my CAs. Without CAs (I.E. simulating out of power), 1hs sucked royally in DPS vs dual wield. So, to me, it seems for us scouts (or swashbucklers), shields make very little difference. Using dual wield, it seems our parry makes up for lack of shield. Message Edited by Naggybait on 03-16-2005 12:53 PM Hmmm, I get Parry increases even when using a shield. Are you sure that parry only works when dual-wielding? Or is it known to be better then? I'm still finding a small benefit to using sword and shield soloing. Again nothing earth-shaking, but it seems a touch better in terms of my final health and doesn't seem noticably slower in the fights.

03-08-2005, 08:51 PM	#1
Gwenev General Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 39	Ok, probably a stupid question, but here goes...Like most, I use dual wielding weapons. Other threads have commented on our relative weakness soloing compared to some other archetypes. We can solo, but not as well as some others. Our main problem is we get damaged too quickly IMHO. Seems to me that a big, big chunk of the damage we do soloing is done via HO's. I don't think HO's are any faster with our speedy dual-wield weapons (something I'm unsure of). Would it make more sense to shift to a one-handed weapon and a shield? Anyone have any experience with this?Thanks

03-10-2005, 07:26 AM	#4
Kaff Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 143	Gwenevie wrote:Ok, probably a stupid question, but here goes...Like most, I use dual wielding weapons. Other threads have commented on our relative weakness soloing compared to some other archetypes. We can solo, but not as well as some others. Our main problem is we get damaged too quickly IMHO. Seems to me that a big, big chunk of the damage we do soloing is done via HO's. I don't think HO's are any faster with our speedy dual-wield weapons (something I'm unsure of). Would it make more sense to shift to a one-handed weapon and a shield? Anyone have any experience with this?Thanks I switch it up. If I didn't own a shield for small-group tanking situations, though, I probably wouldn't go out of my way to buy one for soloing.

03-10-2005, 05:51 PM	#5
Shadebring Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 7	Well interestingly enough before the likes of Errol Flynn came on the scene with their sword fencing acrobatic charm and wit etc. the term Swashbuckler was given to those foot troops who fought with a sword and a buckler the 'swash' bit was added to imitate the noise that the buckler made as it was being moved through the air to intercept the various blows from an opponant. It was quite a popular form of fighting in the early days of fencing when various fencing techniques were being invented and fencing masters sprung up around europe.

03-11-2005, 01:26 AM	#7
Naggyba Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 518	I tried the shield and sword thing vs DW and I found basically very little difference, even though the shield added like 400+ AC to me. I came out about the same either way.I also did a test of 1hs vs dual wield and found they were close to the same DPS, as long as I spammed my CAs. Without CAs (I.E. simulating out of power), 1hs sucked royally in DPS vs dual wield.So, to me, it seems for us scouts (or swashbucklers), shields make very little difference.Using dual wield, it seems our parry makes up for lack of shield. Message Edited by Naggybait on 03-16-2005 12:53 PM

03-13-2005, 08:28 PM	#8
Dave Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 10	I always use a sword and shield when I solo, and I pull the shield out when I get aggro in a group. Most of the damage I do in ANY fight is from my combat arts; I do very little damage auto-attacking. Your arts will do the same damage whether you're attacking with sword and shield, dagger and axe, or rubber chicken and whoopie cushion, and the deflection bonus I get from the round shield lets me live a lot longer so I can USE those arts to kill the mob.

03-18-2005, 01:04 PM	#11
Ute Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 123	Parry works regardless of what you have equipped from what I can tell. More agility, likewise, seems to increase the frequency of parry. What a shield does add is an additional chance to block. Block is only present if you have a shield or are a brawler fighter with the deflection skill(an innate round shield effect).Over in the combat forums someone posted some pretty detailed combat analysis of a monk vs a berseker of equal levels. What seemed to come out of it was this:All your defense skills appear to work in this orderBlock/Deflection > Parry > DefenseAlso note that defense is the only skill that counts from all sides. Block/Deflect and Parry only work in a 120 degree arc in front of your character.So, a shield sort of acts as an initial defense when you have it equipped. It gives you a small chance to outright block an attack. If it gets past the block, it then rolls to see if you parry. In addition, if you do parry, it rolls to see if you riposte(riposte appears to be like a critical hit for parry).If you don't parry, then it rolls based on your defense skill. If you win, then the attack misses. If you lose, then it hits and AC and armor mitigation take over I imagine the reason why we only see a minor increase in performance with a shield is because we can't really equip a very high level shield. So, we only gain a small chance to block. Combined with our slightly lowered dps, it means at best you'll gain a slight advantage, at worst you'll break even because you'll last longer, but it will take longer to kill the creature at the same time.In either case, I probably wouldn't go with a shield if you are not soloing or tanking. Using a shield otherwise, it might give you a small bonus but it is tiny enough that for us, it really is personal preference. __________________

03-18-2005, 11:26 PM	#12
Naggyba Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 518	Yep, what I saw in my test. Shield made very little difference to me as far as damage taken during a fight and it took longer to kill even spamming CAs. Dual wield for me got me pretty close to same damage taken and mobs died faster.Swashbucklers (or scouts in general) just don't seem to have enough blocking skill to make shields really really useful like the fighter class.

03-19-2005, 01:41 AM	#13
Kaff Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 143	Naggybait wrote:Yep, what I saw in my test. Shield made very little difference to me as far as damage taken during a fight and it took longer to kill even spamming CAs. Dual wield for me got me pretty close to same damage taken and mobs died faster.Swashbucklers (or scouts in general) just don't seem to have enough blocking skill to make shields really really useful like the fighter class. It should be noted, though, that the shield is slowing down damage taken -- so in small, scout-tanked group situations, the shield will still be an edge, since you're not providing all the damage, but you're providing all the tanking. Which brings up an interesting (to me) question: I wonder if fighters find the same thing, namely that when talking about soloing, shield vs. dual wield (or two-handed) is pretty much a wash.

03-21-2005, 03:25 AM	#14
woo Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Seattle, WA Posts: 239	im not a swashbuckler, im an assassin but i was reading this and i thought i would throw this in yesterday i parsed out the diff between the best orange spear/round shield and 2x orange daggers-- the dual wield did 1-3more dps (after 1 hour it was 2.34 more dps) the shield / 1h wep i took 4% less damage over the course of an hour. (used each for 1 hour, didnt level up.) so take those numbers and decide. personally i use shield / 1h wep almost all the time mainly for looks, but during solo i prefer the AC. i know these numbers are coming from an assassin, but i would imagine they are similiar. edit: oh im a lvl 26 assassin Message Edited by woode on 03-20-2005 02:28 PM

03-21-2005, 03:49 PM	#15
mike367 Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 36	I find shield useless, I just stopped playing with it all-together. I only attempt to kill blue/sometimes white no arrows if I am feeling lucky. Hardly do I ever engage in multitargets. Anything 3 or more I think is certain death. I feel like the Assasins are really owning up on the dps, seems like they can solo a lot better than us. I for one would like to see a little bit heavier hits coming from the swashie department.

03-23-2005, 08:45 PM	#16
Ramd Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 4	Hm... Now that we have number's for Avoidance, I noticed there are different Sub-catagories for Blocking and Parrying., Can anyone post what thier Avoidance %age is with a Shield and with dual-wielding?

03-24-2005, 02:34 AM	#17
Kaff Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 143	Ramdex wrote:Hm... Now that we have number's for Avoidance, I noticed there are different Sub-catagories for Blocking and Parrying., Can anyone post what thier Avoidance %age is with a Shield and with dual-wielding? 28, using a white-to-me round shield. Legendary, I think, so dropped rather than crafted. Dual wielding and buffed, my avoidance is 54.2%. Swapping out for my shield and axe, I've got 57.7%. Keep in mind that I lose 5 agility in the process, too, though, since I've got more agility on my dual wield weapons than I do on the shield/axe combo. Just looking at with the shield and without it, I'm talking 53.2 vs. 57.5%. So the shield itself (with no agility on it) is worth 4.3% avoidance, or one hit in 23ish. I think we should start wondering why parry doesn't count for much at all (at least as far as we're able to buff it), and we need to be campaigning for some round shield loot with scout stats rather than just priest stat ones. It seems silly to sacrifice a portion of the biggest (adjustable -- defense may be more influential, but it's also very limited in its buffing options) effect on avoidance (agility, despite the nerf) in order to use a more defensive mode of fighting. Agility on shields would be a godsend, at least if they want us to ever use them.

03-24-2005, 05:15 AM	#18
lordalto Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 2	Avoidance is 31%, block is 9.3%, and parry is 24%. The extra 9% makes it worth it to me. Using a treasured shield. 230 shield factor at level 25.

03-24-2005, 05:36 PM	#19
Viln Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Chattanooga Posts: 29	Doesn't having a dual weapon increase your odds of getting a poison on your opponent? Or am I the only one who uses these. __________________ Bump! <--- Faarwolfe's favorite overall signature

03-25-2005, 06:48 AM	#20
Kaff Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 143	Vilnus wrote:Doesn't having a dual weapon increase your odds of getting a poison on your opponent? Or am I the only one who uses these. No, parses have demonstrated that proc-per-hit rates are adjusted so that you tend toward a sort of "target proc-per-minute" rate. Thus, no significant difference in proc per minute has been documented based on weapon speed OR weapon type.

03-29-2005, 12:54 AM	#21
Langel Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 70	I would have but they gave me a kite shield for completing the Shiny Brass Shield heritage quest. The light armor classes got bucklers. I'm not sure why we don't get round shields (or bucklers at the very least! Something we could use)...

03-30-2005, 12:39 PM	#22
Turb General Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 1,117	Hmm, good point on the round shields being int/wis not agi imbued.The other thing to remember for fighters is that they have some skills that require a shield, e.g. the 'shield bash' that pallys have that does low damage but builds hate. So for a tank a shield is more than just block%.Where did you get your block and parry %ages from? __________________

03-31-2005, 02:51 AM	#23
3cho Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 276	Ive got to say, this has been one of the most useful threads I've read in a long time. I play a 27 swash, and I've wondered about the differences between using a shied (or not) and whether dw'ing is better than a one hander. I will probably grab a nice shield the next time I come across one, and try it out. Seems like, for the most part, there shouldn't be a significant difference, but it might be interesting to experience. __________________ -- Adun

03-31-2005, 02:54 PM	#24
Foolsfolly Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 465	All of our damage comes from poison, skills, and HO's. Our melee damage, even with great buffs and max haste, is still negligible compared to the poison skills and HO's. So theres really no reason not to use a shield when soloing, it won't slow down your dps and it will definately help out with your defensive posistion.

03-31-2005, 08:37 PM	#25
Turb General Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 1,117	There is a great thread in the brigand area about %age damage breakdown.It seems a brigand who plotted % dam by melee and CA/HO damage saw a split that varied from around 35:65 up to 25:75 for melee : CA/HO. So if you go by 30% damage being done by your melee weapons you're not far off.However, since this guy was using maybe 20 different damage skills over the sample day(s), there is still good value in keeping your dual-wields high quality, as each does 15% of your damage, while the CAs are somewhat diluted (well, I guess Ruse isn't!). __________________