Shield weapons = crap

How are you going to kill a group of 3-5 shielded stormvermin with a shielded weapon solo, please enlighten me.

Is this a thread about true solo?

Well the comment you responded to specifically says ā€œ-you get stuck on your own vs-ā€ and you said that if youā€™re unable to handle that situation with a shield then you couldnā€™t with any weapon, and Iā€™m just curious about how exactly you would deal with a shielded stormvermin squad with a shielded weapon by yourself. In my experience you would get two or three attacks off before another one takes its place effectively nullifying any hope you have of breaking their guards.

Shield has the advantage of additional push angle and stronger pushes. Only thing Iā€™d say prevents Hammer + Shield on Bardin to be truly decent is the fact that both strong and light attacks are cc, making it almost completely impossible to fight armoured enemies. Iā€™d like to see the heavy attack be a vertical strike to have at least some kind of headshot attack.

The comment said that shield are useless if you are on your own. Thatā€™s much more on the weapon and not the shield. The axe is fine against armored enemies. If you can solo 3 CW with a weapon with low dodge like the 2-hammer then probably you can also with the shield. SV are much easier since they can be bashed silly.

Handling doesnā€™t mean you need to kill all by yourself. This is a major difference.
If you want to kill every elite by yourself thereā€™s shade, thereā€™s BH, etc.

For handling them, as long as you have a shield all elites are trivial since it can simply stagger them down.

Only elite that is something is CW. Many people will try blocking it, I rather dodge and force them to punch the shield proccing the +50%. They die very quickly after that. Obviously that facing an entire patrol itā€™s best to just block with skill active and let your team enjoy the 50% until they reduce the critical mass.
As long as you are hugging the CW he will probably try punching instead of swinging a real attack. Heā€™s useless in this state.

Imo thereā€™s a misconception that the shield is for crowd control against hordes.
Itā€™s quite simple that against a pack of vermin the shield itself is much less useful than say using only a hammer or sword.

Shields provide crowd control against elites, which few weapons can stagger and usually require +power.

I think you misread my message or donā€™t understand what I mean, Iā€™m talking about shielded stormvermin being impossible to solo in a group larger then 3 with a shield+anything, simply due to how their block recharge works and that when they group they tend to swap out for one another preventing you from being able to actually damage them. Whereas with a 2Handed weapon you can punch through their block quick enough to kill one before the others step in with their shields.

Never happened to me using axe+shield, but it may be that other combinations arenā€™t doable since a few patches.

As I said, itā€™s more on the weapon than the shield. Many weapons arenā€™t good against packed shieldvermin.

I agree with you there, kind of wish shieldbreaker weapons blew their guard away a bit easier then they do. Flail is the only reliable way to kill them in my experience.