Shield weapons = crap

u did it again there is no point of them on legend-cata runs *only axe-shield dwarf
same was in VT1

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I found Kruber’s Sword and Shield to be OK too…but not great. I hate the Mace and Shield.

They all feel underpowered. The Dwarf’s axe and shield feels like it doesn’t hit/cleave enough targets which makes it a struggle to fight more than one enemy at a time. This is the exact thing that you are doing when you are playing a character with a shield…getting in there face first into a horde…why make a horde-fighting weapon so single-targety feeling?

The charged attack for all of them is horrible.

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The 1h axe is generally a single target weapon, don’t think the shield changes much about it (unlike for the mace/hammer, where the shield ruins the weapon’s offense).

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Shields should be more efficient… I don’t know, maybe less stamina used pushing? More taunt power?

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As a Bardin player I have found the 1h hammer, no shield, to be his best defensive weapon. Its only a little bit less stamina and its left click > left click > push > push attack sequence provides loads of crowd control and cleave for hordes. Its charge attack is a nice overhead swing for headshotting hard targets.

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If I didn’t have to cancel out of the shield punch heavy attack I’d use them the same way I did in V1 as a massive crowd controller that locks down everything, but as it stands I just don’t use them at all.

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If the heavy consistently CC’d like in VT1 then they’d be viable, used to love them. As it stands they’re the only weapons (and 1h axe) i dont use on bardin.

The characters where block is relevant have ways to get infinite stamina and unlimited blocks to where the added stamina from a shield is redundant and kinda useless, the characters who don’t have super block need to be able to dodge due to how many boss attacks are able to ignore block or insta drain all stamina. Plus due to how stamina regen works, all melee weapons, regardless of max available stamina, end up depending primarily on their regen anyways. So yeah besides being able to reliably stun berserkers, there isn’t much going for them.

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I also noticed playing yesterday (at least with Kruber’s Sword and Shield) that your movement speed when swinging is severely gimped. This makes it hard to manoeuvre around hordes and forces you to just bash…spam left click, which works, it just wastes stamina. It has to be the biggest movement reduction of any melee weapon. I don’t see why it has to be like that, why not encourage rather than discourage people to use tank weapons on tanks? Why bother when I can just use the 2H hammer if I want stagger and the halberd if I want something that works with everything? How many players on Champion and up do you see on Kruber with shields rather than halberds? Doesn’t that say something?

The biggest issue with the shields of kruber are that neither of them offer any AP, you can still see some dwarfs with shield+axe.
I don’t really think 2h weapons are what is the problem, they also suffer from low mobility and lose a lot of defense.
The 1h weapons are really what makes shield pointless, sacrificing minimal stamina and blocking power for massive mobility AND AP on the mace/hammer.
I would say the 2h hammer is actually rather mediocre compared to the 1h hammer, which is better in almost everything, just a little harder to use.

You mean the 1H mace on Kruber? I found hitting stuff OK and the increased dodge and fast charged attacks are AWESOME, it just seems to be very difficult compared to other unshielded weapons to stop yourself from getting hit (short of bunnyhopping and spamming left click which still doesn’t work that well) which is obviously a huge factor on Champion and above. It seems like while other wide arc swinging 1H weapons at least to some extent stop the enemies swinging while you are attacking even if their stagger isn’t that great, enemies just keep swinging at you while you are attacking with the 1H mace. If it wasn’t for that I would love that thing. Currently I just don’t use it. With Kruber I just go for the mass CC/stagger + single target armour penetration of the 2H hammer or the “It’s great at everything” of the halberd (which also nicely keeps enemies out of reach. To pick anything else on Champion and up is just gimping yourself.

The 1H hammer on the Dwarf doesn’t seem to suffer from this problem as much and retains all the other advantages I mentioned above so…yeah.

If the bash worked like VT1 or at least had more utility (we used to bash whole waves of rats off the bridge in The Fall last stand map) it might be different.

I agree 100% that the shield weapons not having AP (the mace should ALWAYS have AP) basically renders them useless. If they changed the first charged attack to a sword thrust or a mace overhead strike, and changed the shield charged bash to maybe “hold both mouse buttons” or something that would fix it.

They are both the same weapon.

Kruber

Shield+ Mace: Power attack makes you useless against armour and even more useless against patrols. It needs to cleave or be changed to the shield slam for it to be worth using.

Also the Shove-Attack is an overhead and his only headshot ability with the mace, but does lower damage on armoured. Would have thought it would do more.

Shield+x: Shield slam (charged attack), doesn’t trigger Paced Strikes on Merc. This makes Sword and Shield really bad for it, because of limited cleave until later in the combo. Wanted to make an offensive tank/support with shared Paced Strikes. The same build with Mace + Shield feels ok, except for the power attack vs elites.

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I just tested with Bardin’s 1H hammer and noticed that I was getting smacked right in the face by enemies in front of me while attacking them, same as I find with Kruber’s 1H mace.

Also I have never found myself getting “stuck” in a group of enemies that I can’t escape from apart from when I was testing the 1H mace yesterday. If you get stuck you die. Any other weapon I can easily bash/shove/jump out but I was stuck solid and that didn’t just happen once.

Personal preference I guess.

My friend swears by the 1H hammer for Bardin.

I will stick to the 2H hammer.

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Every shielded weapon is bad… but the worst thing is Kruber’s mace+shield. At least Bardin’s axe+shield pierces armor.

I’ll admit right away, I don’t have much to add here. I just feel that the discussion is one-sided, and needs an opposing opinion too.

So here goes: I think the shield weapons are fine. As so many other things, it’s a matter of playstyle and skill. At least some people ignore that not every weapon is meant to straight up kill all enemies. They are control weapons, and the control is more than just beating away with wide, low-damage attacks. With every one of them, you push, push-strike, attack and block equally. With Sword or Axe, you weave the shield bash into your routine. With hammer/mace too, but that’s more complicated.

And besides, no one is forcing anyone to use any specific weapon. You feel like something doesn’t fit you, you either learn it better or leave it.

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While I appreciate the attempt at playing devils advocate, I disagree entirely with your belief that the shields are adequate control weapons. They have negligible knockback on attacks outside of the shield punch, which depending on your weapon is the second attack in the heavy combo. I used the axe and shield almost exclusively in V1 as I could lockdown a horde of almost any size with the right play, I could not do that with any of the shielded weapons in V2 simply because of their movesets.

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With Kruber’s weapons I wanted that kind of CC tank build, but was let down by the things I mentioned in my post. I don’t think they’ve considered the amount of elites at higher difficulties with some of the weapons. The power attack with mace, for instance. All you can really do is block > shove vs more than 1 elite. Especially if they’re surrounded by non-elites. That means using up stamina which you may need to take damage. It means I can only hit enemies on the one side of the elite and spam stagger as you can’t down one like Bardin can with his axe+shield.

This leaves those weapons feeling underwhelming, not very interesting and not fun to use. You can get the same amount of stagger vs hordes using Halberd or Exe sword, which just leaves you wondering why you would want to bother with shield+x weapons as Kruber anyway.

You’re not getting the same damage as Bardin’s Axe and Shield, and you’re not really getting anything to make up for it (higher amount of CC etc). On high difficulties anyway. On lower ones I can see how the Mace and Shield could work fine.

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Why CC a horde when you can just mass slaughter them with the 2H sword and take very little damage? Why CC them with a shield when you can CC them AND murder them all with a 2H hammer? You can’t really tank the bosses now like you could in VT1 when it was just a rat ogre, and there aren’t really any all-the-time useable aggro keeping skills that you would expect from a dedicated tank anyway.

That’s not to mention that if you are kitted out for tanking and you get stuck on your own vs. 2 shieldvermin or 2-3 chaos warriors you are screwed with your shield weapon whereas if you had a 2H hammer or a halberd you would be self-sufficient.

You may as well just be a tougher DPS who can handle all types of enemies.

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Because shields allow CC’ing several elites per-bash into a perma-stun. Any other weapon, at most, staggers one elite.

If you are unable to hold your ground with a shield you certainly are unable with any other weapon. Both IB and FK have skills specific to enable blocking for an extended time.