I love shields, but atm there are few reasons to use one in NRFTW. You have better results using bow as off-hand.
Why are useless:
-No runes for shields
-Adds weight without significant reward
-Can’t block 100% damage
-Doesn’t improve parry windows
-The only benefits are the enchantments (Supposing that most of these are applied regardless if you are blocking or not). But you can benefit from enchantments using bows as well and save weight.
-After 50% armor reduction you get diminishing returns, no point investing into armor or weight.
What can you do with a shield:
-Inflict poise damage. (But you receive damage).
-Block instead of dodge. (However dodging isn’t hard at least using medium roll and/or quickstep). So it is preferable to dodge UNLESS you gain something while blocking.
-Parry. (However you can parry without a shield and as far as I know the parry windows are the same. Can someone confirm?)
-Nothing. (Just use it to gain its enchantments).
So, reasons of using a shield and spending points on weight are (besides of aesthetic):
-Dodge issues due to heavy weight armor class, blocking whenever you can’t dodge seems a good idea. (But I think it’s inefficient).
-You want to parry with a shield, but it’s inefficient since you can do it without it.
-Specific build designed to block
In my experience the most usable shields right now are medium since light ones are too weak and blocking with heavy ones compromise your movement and dodging. While we wait to further updates for shields and new runes. I hope we can provide some ideas for some shield focused builds.
General build ideas for blocking:
-Enchantment to “gain focus after block”. Combine with “focus gain increased by X”.
-Enchantment to “gain health after block”, Combine with “increased healing by X”. (I haven’t been able to found this enchantment after The Breach, can someone confirm if still exists?)
-Use enchantments to “inflict damage (physical or elemental) after block”. Combine with “damage dealt increased by X” / “heath, plague, cold, electric build up improvement” / “heath, plague, cold, electric damage dealt improved by X”.
-Enchantments as “reflect 1-3% damage taken” are very worthless if damage taken means AFTER your armor and shield reduction. Even if it’s BEFORE it may seems barely usable. Can someone confirms if it’s after or before?
General build ideas to parrying with a shield:
-Similar to block, you can gain focus/health or deal damage after a successful parry. But contrary to shields you can combine with your main weapon’ parry enchantments.
-Enchantments to “increase stamina”/“refill stamina” after parry. (seems the most usable)
And finally the most usable, at least in my experience, is the poise build.
-Design a build to hold enough poise resistance in order to stagger enemies by blocking and then you can backstab/charge. A little boring tho, but very usable.
-Combine with heal runes and enough food to restore your health after encounters.
-Combine with stagger enchantments and/or backstab: (gain health/focus when backstab/staggering) (Also gain health after charge attack it’s very useful since you can charge after staggering).
Notes: Based on this list I guess that “gain health after blocking” got deleted after The Breach.
Based on the actual game state, any other builds, combos, or ideas to implement with shields?
Since shields are not great atm, what could help to make them more fun to use and/or useables in the future?