Shield Maneuvers

[Jelten]

Ok, going to give this a shot - figured it was time for a new thread.

Going to go 3x shield, use a tower shield, and give katars a shot for sng.

I'm already high enough trained to have 140+ armor so full plate is not a problem.

Shield maneuvers are new to me though - what are the "must haves"?

Um... Voln, Dark Elf, Tackle/Disarm/WTR/Cries master if any of that matters, which I assume at least some might.

[Archigeek]

Will you be hunting alone or in a group? There are some very group friendly shield maneuvers.

I keep preaching shield trample mastery, tortoise stance, and block mastery, but there are a lot of fun ones to chose from. Using katars is going to be a challenge, particularly if only using one. You'll want a lot of MOC to go with that.

[Soulance]

Spike Focus and Mastery are fun. You just stand there and creatures get hit by the spike flare.

I think you Warriors can also redirect bolt spells and other thrown/shot things as well which hit other creatures in the room. I only have a Pally but I love the Spike Mastery. PropUp is nice as it helps keep you on your feet with the Tower.

[Jelten]

Yeah, I know katar won't be easy... I might hold off on it until closer to cap when I have less stuff left to train, but I'd like to use one eventually.

As for group - maybe. Probably not anytime soon though; most of my friends sold out when GS3 became GSIV so they're stuck levelling from scratch now that some of us came back. Obviously, I didn't sell out, so I've a huge head start.

[Mohrgan]

Shield trample and trample mastery are by far what I get the most mileage out of and add a mass knockdown maneuver for warriors. It's like ewave (except with hard RT).

Shield bash using shield points instead of CMAN points frees up some more CMANs and I often use it on escorts to knock down the stuff like frost giants and hill trolls that aren't worth killing but will hold up your progress.

Another one is the shield focus maneuvers, which have a number of effects, the most important of which to my mind is extra CvA (I use full Tower Shield focus because I use a tower shield).

I've trained fully in Shield mind (takes a special shield to use, works with my kroderine shield) which is basically a super cool concept which would function as a get out of jail free card against warding spells, but in practice I'm not sure if I've ever actually used it effectively because its tricky to use. Plus it only works for 10 seconds and then requires a cooldown of 2 minutes...so I love the idea of having it, I just never use it.

I have a couple of ranks of shielded brawler too, makes UAC a bit more effective with my shield out by reducing the penalty.



As far as must haves...the only one that I'd really call a must have is the Shield Focus (whatever shield size you use), That CvA is money.

I'd almost go so far as to say trample mastery too, because to me, its just an awesome addition to the shield using fighter arsenal and I don't know why anyone with shield training would NOT want it.

[Jeril]

http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?95674-Me-currently

That has a list of my shield maneuvers, most of them are for passive defense.