Kruber - Shields are WEAK

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
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Pantheon of Heroes, Kruber +10, etc.
I just got a red sword and board with Kruber and thought I would try it out on Footknight for the day.

It is functionally awful. I have tried games with every trait on it and still ended up on Swiftslaying just to proc crits more often.

The general flow of the sword and board is that you can leftclick spam for horde-clear or for the armor piercing hit on the 3rd sword swing and shieldbash/push elites. The charge attack shieldbash (and shieldpush) can reliably stagger elites, even if noncrit followups are pretty… meh. It is useless against bosses. It’s low dodge range is annoying, probably causing you to biff around 33% of your hookrats/assassin/leech escapes and boss whomps. It can block bullets, which honestly is the coolest part about it.

Opportunist does not reliably interrupt the slow overhead swings from elites (what is even the point). Standard shieldpush can softstun them out of every other attack animation. It does not affect bosses.

Shieldpush against hordes is practically worthless, except for those very brief moments where horde density is extreme because of no collision and then almost any other weapon can do the same thing. What’s worse is since pushing knocks things around (especially with high block angle) it will often cause a stray rat to get back up and buttstab someone or just ruin elite headshots.

So lets try something else; blocking with Off-balance. Only really useful against bosses and chaos warriors because most people plan for damage and breakpoints. Blocking infinitely against a horde rarely happens because available hordeclear is so strong, including the sword and board’s own leftclick spam. Even if you DO stand there blocking an elite’s rollerskating overhead will eventually shatter your guard which allows stray hits to creep in or increases the risk of you getting pinned to a wall. Icing on the cake? You can’t actually pull boss hate with the low damage from the sword so you end up flailing uselessly at it’s back.

So here’s my problem; I was ‘tanking’ (if that word can even apply to this game) better with the Execution’s Sword and Halberd. Both have amazing hordeclear, pulls boss hate, wipes elites and chaos warriors with headshots, and both even have reasonable push angles. I should add that essentially just because of the guardbreaking overheads (let alone specials and boss unblockables) high stamina is practically useless. 3-4 stamina shields and 30% block reduction is adequate on literally every weapon.

I don’t have perfect suggestions but:
(way) increased charge attack damage, an armored pushstab, a chain that skips to the 3rd swing, and/or the ability to block overhead guardbreaks (Edit1: you CAN parry with the parry trait) would help it go a long way towards obtaining a playable identity.

Edit2: Played with Mace+Shield with parry trait and man does that thing need armor penetration on heavy and/or first swing. Being able to parry the unblocks would be vastly more useful if it knocked warriors on their ass instead of watching them cleave your teammates through you anyways.

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Also, Bardin has axe&shield with a totally armor piercing… Kruber doens’t.

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IDK, I have found sword and shield awesome but I do only use it on Foot Knight. Free blocks after charge, + charge cooldown on melee crits (whatever that is called) get me out of a lot of sticky situations, you can even block CW overhead for free with those free blocks. And otherwise overhead of CW is the only one that can drain your stamina so those are the only ones to really worry about dodging, but I’ve found that the windup/telegraph on those moves is so huge that it’s easy to push some trash out of the way to the side and then dodge that way to avoid them. Can also take +40% stamina recovery after a successful charged attack, and I’ve found I can take on ridiculously huge groups of mixed foes. Focus on CC & killing what you can and leave killing the heavy armor to teammates and the sword & board really shine.

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For the record Flinlock is completely right, and the tip about shieldpushing a way for you to dodge into is pretty useful.

Any weapon can make use of the 25 talent vs the overheads though, which just leaves the shield/sword with low damage output. This becomes frustratingly obvious against bosses, and since for some reason today there is a Chaos Spawn in every game I have been getting my face rubbed in it. Shieldpushing (at least as a non-host) DOES NOT PULL HATE, and since sword’s damage is negligible and the blunderbuss isn’t anti-armor most fights I find myself uselessly hacking away until someone is grabbed/downed where then I can respond with the Sir Kruber.

Additionally Executioner’s Sword and Halberd dominate all of these situations. A patrol? Sir Kruber and then you follow up by actually killing them , a feat made even faster with your team on the same job. Hordes? They have that covered too. Bosses? Executioner’s Sword charge attacks (with attack speed modifiers) spaced with backdodges can solo bosses (harder against chaos spawn).

The only niche I can think of for the shield is the ability to efficiently shieldpush mixed hordes of elites/trash simultaneously. While that’s something, the trade-off in killing power can make this weapon frustrating to play with. Something that is only accentuated by a team with not-so-hot players on the damage classes.

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