What purpose do you think each weapon have?, sword&shield, mace&shield.
And can someone answer me, why all weapons have 90/180 degree effective block angle (daggers 40 degree excluded), but sword&shield have only 120?
I can tell you that Kruber has almost no weapons that have a block angle which exceeds 90, the only two I can think of are his shielded weapons. That being said, I agree that it is a little odd that they do not have the same block-angle… they are meant to be nearly the same weapon.
Perhaps it is indicative of the swords damage potential versus the maces crowd control?
As to their base purpose, they are meant to be front-line weapons capable of battering any number of foes with their ridiculous stamina and knock-back potential. In the last few patches they were deemed sub-optimum by most of the community but they can still be very enjoyable to wield and make you nigh-impervious to damage; if you do wield them, you will find your damage output less than superb.
Both excel at crowd control and survivability. They’ve been significantly buffed a few patches back so they’re much better now than they used to be!
I love sword and shield and play it quite a bit. Amazing crowd control and does very well against mixed hordes. The push stab and the second charge attack both do great armor damage, and thanks to the combo changes you can easily chain push-stab -> second charge attack for a nice quick double stab. The shield bash can stagger pretty much anything short of a chaos warrior mid overhead attack, so it’s most effective when bashing everything into submission so your team can kill them easily.
I can’t for the life of me figure out how to play mace and shield well. I find I just eat way too many hits and haven’t found a good rhythm with it. Also as to block angles… not sure about that one.
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Main reason for me why I can’t get into it is because shield slam isn’t first charged attack and there is little reason why a weapon like this needs sweaps on the light attacks and sweaps on the charged. Putting the overhead on the push attack works okay, but makes you wonder why not put that on the second charged attack. It is definitely not going to make 1h mace obsolete, that’s fore sure.
But sword and shield, I agree, it is a pretty decent option for FK because of what you described, and being able to push-stab through shields is a pretty awesome feat. It is also a solid choice for Huntsman if you want to play defensiveley. And the amount of temp-health you can generate with “temp health on stagger” and the shield slam is absolutely bonkers.
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I’m one of the few people who actually like the [Blunt Instrument] and Shield’s patterns. I find it more interesting and at least as flexible to use than the other shield weapons, but it takes a lot of figuring out, and maybe somewhat more planning on the run when actually fighting, as you can’t put out the slams at any point you want.
There’s a significant redundancy problem there, though. Hammer/Mace is already a weapon more concentrated on control than damage (not a bad thing by itself), and pairing it with the shield turns the know even more towards control - so much so that it’s getting too specialized. In addition, its moves are often a choice between some control and little damage, or good control and next to no damage. It needs tuning down to a more balanced approach. Higher cleave on the hammer/mace strikes could help.
For the original point, shield weapons on both Markus and Bardin have wide angles to facilitate blocking better - something that shields really should be able to do. If you dig further into posts (mainly on Reddit) about the deeper mechanics, you’ll find that the default angle for pushes is always the same, independent of the weapon’s inherent angle. A weird thing, I think, but it’s there (and please, if I’ve understood or remembered this wrong, do correct it). I can’t say anything for certain, but I’d guess the reason for the slightly lower angle on the Sword&Shield is due to the more offensive nature of the weapon: good cleave and damage (compared to the other shielded ones), and still good enough stagger on the weapon strikes too, so it encourages swinging your weapon more.
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Mace and shield is all about stacking stam/stam regen and abusing push attacks for armour and spamming with lights for trash. You cover for the crappy heavy chain using your career skill and talent/stat build. Unlike the sword/axe types, there’s no combos that are better than spam. Don’t rely on the slam. It’s basically inaccessible when you really need it. Likewise, don’t rely on the first heavy (the horizontal sweep). It gets stuck on whatever armoured enemy is standing furthest to the right, leaving everything to their left free to poke you in the face.
IMO their purpose is to take on the enemy’s focus and keep it on you while you and your team kill them. A lot of people just hold block a lot and think they’re tanking, but all that achieves is getting you whacked when the stamina inevitably runs out. You do tend to block a bit more often than you do with other weapons, but that’s more as an alternative to dodging than about tanking damage. The way to tank with a shield is by weaving in slams and push attacks into your attack combos so you’re cc-ing and interrupting everything while you wear the pack down and take out specific targets. You kill things without giving them the opportunity to swing at you.
From a utility perspective, the slam is the major reason to use a shield weapon over the 1h alternative. Stamina is mostly ammunition for push attacks rather than for absorbing damage. The major reason the mace/hammer types suck is that the slam’s position in the heavy attack chain means you can’t use it in those situations where it’s the tool that you really need to use. Also, the lack of useful combos means actually getting a slam out feels clunky and (at least in my case) breaks your flow.
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They’re pretty good if you know how to use them. It promotes a more block/shove based play style that lets you stonewall enemies in place and stop them from advancing. This is different from the typical dodge-kite style that most weapons use where you fall back in increments while killing the horde a bit at a time. The ability to block ratling gunners shouldn’t be underestimated either.
That said Mace/Hammer and Shield could use a buff IMO. It’s only good anti-armour/high dps attack is the push strike, I think they should buff the (one) heavy attack to be stronger and give the mace a 4-hit combo with the last hit having some armour damage just like the 1h mace.
The fun you can have with gunners it one of the reasons I love using them. You can use the gunner to wipe out whole groups of enemies by holding your block up and moving so that the pack is between you and it. You can also bait it into shooting at you while you move away from the team so that someone can kill it without taking return fire. Ever had the team pinned behind a corner by a gunner? Never again.
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Don’t forget gunner surfing! If you get right up in the gunner’s face as he’s about to fire and jump he’ll launch you into the air.
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Never tried this, I’ll have to give it a shot!
I nearly touched the roof of into the nest this way. 10/10 would recommend.
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Well, devs could make shield slam into alt-attack, it would be convinient and logical IMO, but devs do not like this idea for some reason…
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