This is my experience with them.
1- parry is hard and not for everyone but you can build some shenagins with parry, look at glove gems i keep a cloth glove for parrying. Plus lots of possible parry enchants. Also you can heal on parry to stop the hurt. One Advantage to shield, the parry window is larger (still tight) but is larger and easier.
2- you dont see the stat in your “armor” on the character menu it gets added when in use and depending on shield type and weight give more poise/def. You can not nullify dmg but you can greatly reduce it. And also not get knocked on your back as much. A note on that if you equip a 2 hander and have shield in offhand slot the weight doesnt go into your load only the active gear does same with backup weapons.
3- you dont have to equip it 100% of the time, get an upgrade for your main hand slots carry a 1 and 2 hander use it as the need arises to block pesky attacks or hold out in a tough fight to stratagize and not die. You can also use skills then hide right back behind your shield (like throw) its an option to stay safe. Let me know if thats helpful i love shields. Oh use gems on them to make blocking that much better.
Sword shield is great, I can block 99% of all hits from mobs and bosses. Only the poise breakers get through. I have focus gain and life on block. I gain 15hp on block…
Parry on shield IMO feels easier/faster. You get the infusion bonuses from it, and you don’t even have to parry in order to knock the enemy off balance, just block ++ we know it’ll be getting moves in the future. I’d say shield is plenty okay, it’s not meta, but okay
I used a shield throughout my playthrough… “blocking attacks generates x% focus” is nice. So there are some mobs in the crucible that I know don’t hit hard. I just block a couple attacks to generate a bunch of focus
Thank you for your feedback. Can you elaborate on what enchants you can put? all the enchants i see are to gain life on parry. Thats the only one i found, but maybe there are others.
Dont get the phrase ‘keep a cloth glove for parrying’ what do you mean exactly?
Greatly reduce the damage when you parry? is there some kind of algorithm that your aware of because when i parry the guys in the crucible i take alot of damage making the shield almost useless. If a dev reads this it would be nice if they could explain in a thread how the damage mitigation works with the shield.
Happy to help!
Heres a small table i made for gems when im trying to plan out my builds for a quick guide. Im sure there are better ones out there but it works. As you can tell gems on gloves are basically only parry bonus. I keep 1 glove for parrying with example (hp, stam, focus, dmg) i abreviate alot to save time. You cannot stack 2 hp bonus gems (ruby AND bloodstone) on a white gear. The other ways to get parry bonus are enchants randomaly on other gear you can roll basically all of those things on a weapon as well for example but thats pure random chance. Now the contradiction, you roll a purple glove with heal on parry you can add 1 gem that also heals on parry but your at the mercy of rngesus for that (glove only). It doesnt have to be a cloth glove i just keep a designated “parry” glove with those enchants for when i wanna parry. Mine happens to be a cloth so i can use on all my characters easily. Thats not very often though that i want to parry its not my fav playstyle id rather just tank it with a shield up. This is where the dmg mitigation and armor kick in not so much on the parry itself i could have clarified that sorry for confusion. This is not concrete but i did read someones testing on armor and what values matter the magic number for echo knight mitigation was 875 to get the most mitigation of dmg from strongest attacks currently (not 100% btw) most every other normal non crucible enemy 350 ish should do the trick. The only way i know right now to “mitigate” dmg on parry is to out heal the dmg and have high armor still. If you wanna parry it is highly sugested that you build for parry heavilly its harder to pull off on just any character but it is rewarded highly if you build into it heavilly. Hope this helps and im not just rambling lol
Just did some testing on it and make sure its not a bug cause i was curious myself, To go back to “1-i still recieve dmg on parry”. with no armor on for crucible enimies i verified. Simple answer, if my parry was even slightly off still (felt like i would get the parry) i did still get dmg but on a succseful parry no dmg was given.
I have some tips for this though. If you have any on parry effects like say “heal on parry” you will know you get the parry when you see the heal numbers show up. If you see dmg instead thats was a missed parry. Window is really tight!
Not all parry will poise break the enemy, one example of this is the really tall guys with a mace that can smash 3 times. In order to parry this atk you have to parry all 3 times.
I couldnt test echo knight i aint that good lol.
