Sadly, after 4/5 months and many patches, the bash is still bugged. It’s slower than any other shields’ bash.
Please Fatshark, could you fix it or give us some notices? I’m super happy about how you buffed Mace & Shield, it would be great, but this bug ruins the weapon.
EDIT: after more test, we think the problem isn’t (at least not only) the bash itself… but there is an input lag, a delay, after the push, wich influences the bash.
Is it really a bug, or a balance consideration? I’d like to see it sped up as well, don’t get me wrong, but also I’d say it goes a little far to call it “ruining” the weapon…
I did a post 4/5 months ago and they tagged it as bug… anyway I guess that “it ruins the weapon” part is subjective, but there is no reason to be slower.
Exactly how there is no need about smaller Sword & Shield’s push angle 
There’s a delay after pushing with mace/hammer and shield which seems to be the issue here, makes push into bash and push into weapon swap less fluid than with other shield weapons.
Trying spamming push with the different shields to see the difference.
I mean right now H/M+S is probably the strongest shield weapon by a good margin (oh how the times have changed lol), so that seems like a fair balancing factor. I’d say mace + shield is probably the best weapon for FK right now, it’s also a top pick for GK.
I really think it’s fine and I haven’t had any issue at all getting the shield bash off in tough situations (even with no attack speed bonuses).
not necessarily a bug since I didn’t adjust for animation times when shifting the heavies around
Fatshark might take a different view on it however
Exactly! The problem becomes more evident after a push.
It’s a bug, look here. Marked as acknowledged.
Anyway, apart this, I disagree that M&S is the strongest shield. S&S has more damage vs hordes. A&S has more armors damage and its bash is even faster than a standard bash. Without talking about about BS&S and Elf Shield, wich clearly maintin their pros.
Anyway, if Fatshark started to think that M&S is too strong, there would be better ways to balance them… a malus on the bash, one of the fundamental shields’ features, seems to me silly.
I’m not sure I have understood what you wrote… but it should be a bug, look the link I posted above.
If the choice is to speed up the bash but nerf the M/H&S in another way to compensate, I’d really prefer the weapon is not messed with at all. Altogether it’s a good and balanced weapon as-is.
And since tge topic came up: I personally still prefer A&S on Ironbreaker (and Engi and RV). That’s also a great weapon. I wouldn’t nescessarily rank M/S&S over A&S right now. I think they are pretty well matched though. Shield weapons as they are now are all in a good spot, and I wouldn’t like them to be messed with muxh, to be honest. (But S&S needs its angle fixed as Soul said, and it might benefit from the headshot multiplier that other swords got as well.)
Fair points. Honestly I don’t play much IB or AnS so my comparison point was more with Kruber SnS and Bret SnS, neither of which seem to me to offer much to compete with MnS. Agreed SnS could use both the block arc increase as well as 1h sword’s finesse increase. Maybe then it’d be fine and balanced, I dunno.
I feel S&S is actually a better and safer control weapon than M&S, funnily enough. It is faster and less stamina hungry, while it can still deal with single targets / armor well enough. I like it as a backup weapon on GK to get out of high pressure situations.
Though I must admit I haven’t really played GK since last BBB, because always when I’m about to play a different Kruber I think “But I could also be playing FK with M&S right now…”. One of my absolute favorite classes in the game right now.
just scream “SIR KRUBER” whenever you do anything and you’re basically still a foot knight in spirit
Anyway yeah personally I still prefer the sword and board over mace/hammer & shield. I don’t see myself ever liking the Bret version unless they make L1 useful/a sweep
I looked up the existing report I made in our database and it appears to have been closed as “Works as Designed”.
Hammer/Mace & Shield is a slightly slower weapon handling-wise than the other shield weapons. Working as intended.
@FatsharkJulia I would not want there to be a misunderstanding, because it seems to me very strange… I can understand if they want to make M&S a slower weapon, but we aren’t talking about slow mobility or slower attack speed. There is a delay, an input lag, after a push.
Moreover BBB’s patch note said they introduced bash attack as heavy 1 exactly for “copy” other shields’ behavior, wich have to match about certain mechanics (like bashing), while they have remain different about other aspects Indeed M&S doesn’t need this input lag/slower bash, it already has cleary disadvantages when compared with similar weapons like S&S (more horde damage, less stamina hungry) and A&S (faster in every single aspect, more armor damage, more single target damage).
I’ve re-opened the internal report with a link to this. 
Thanks!
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