What is the use of a shield?

[Culdare]

Hi,

I am still fairly new to the game, have a level 50 destroyer now. Loving the game! My main taste in games are either destroyer and Alch types. That aside, my lack of understanding of shield uses. It seems like it reduces the capabilities of your destroyer, or are there skills that boost the shields effectiveness / usefullness?

Thanks for your time!

[dreamrider]

Though I play a Vanq consistently, here are the main advantages I have seen cited for shield in many discussions over the last 5 months:
(Oh, BTW, based on what I have seen posted about shield work vs dual wield, my usual secondary weapon combination is pistol + shield.)

1) It is an extra layer of armor, often the heaviest after torso, to which all general armor buffs apply and which can be enchanted independently. Shield enchantments tend to be protective, as with all other armor items.

2) Blocking, blocking, blocking! Even vanilla high-level shield types have 9-12% inherent blocking of all incoming damage. Really nice enchanted shields can be picked up with +6-8% more blocking as a beginning enchantment on top of that. If you choose to enchant a few times on top of that, you stand a decent chance of adding a few % of blocking on top of that. Wouldn't you like to have a bit of armor that stops 20-25% of all damage from each hit BEFORE armor value is appied to reduce the hit value?

3) A sort of negative advantage: Since all Skill-provided special attacks that are weapon based are based on the DPS or other characteristics of the right-hand weapon, you are not diminishing any of your powerhouse moves (except the Dual-Wield bonus) by using a shield combination.

dreamrider

[Culdare]

Oh! Thank you, that makes quite a bit of sense. Would you happen to know if Slash will deal less damage if only equipped with a single one handed weapon? I currently have it maxed and can usually one hit quite a bit.

Thanks for the help!

[dreamrider]

Sorry, don't know that one with certainty.

My secondhand-from-reading best guess is - Yes - less damage, but not as much less as you might think. Slash damage is %DPS based. The general consensus in the forums is that special DPS-based damage is only calculated from the right-hand weapon.

So, probably, you would at most lose the unmodified strike value of your left hand weapon, while getting the full Slash damage as calculated off the right-hand weapon.

It is entirely possible, despite the animation, that the left-hand weapon is not conrtibuting anything at all to the damage during a Slash Skill attack. If so, you would not be losing anything.

Since Slash is the Destroyer beginning Skill, why don't you create a couple of new characters and experiment. One with two weapons, one with weapon + shield. Results won't be exact (unless using the editor or console extensively to pre-set the characters), since you have to develop the characters a little to set up the comparison, but it should be enough to get a good working impression of the impact.

dreamrider

[RagingGamer]

% chance to reflect % ranged damage is also very worth having on an extra piece of armor (the shield) that, as far as I have seen, isn't a mod you will get on a secondary weapon. Also shields can have +health, in addition to armor, blocking, etc. On VHHC, these things really add up to assist you in NOT dying so easily.

[Culdare]

Thank you for the responses! This has been VERY helpful. My first character is still in Normal mode. I am trying to decide what I want to do when I do the VH mode the first time through (Vanq, maybe a Destroyer again - loving destroyer!).

Thanks again!