shield skills and Dark Elves

[Briem]

So I'm curious what everyone's thoughts are for the shield skills. Some of the ones available sound amazing, but I also don't want to waste training points on something that sounds amazing, but when applied practically the skill itself actually falls short. What are some peoples views on the shield skills for pallies, what have people liked and disliked, whats a must have and whats avoidable, whats the ideal shield size or what based on personal preference worked for you? Also please inform me of your race, as I do know that can play a factor, as well as the shield size.

[Jeril]

If you look over the list of skills paladins are limited to large and tower shields. You'll want shield focus, probably shield bash/charge. Not sure what other options you get as a paladin. If someone wants to copy/paste the list when you type shield list profession that would be swell. If not I'll probably do it later tonight.

[Briem]

Yeah I used the list, I was just wondering if anyone had used some of these skills and their thoughts and the effectiveness of the skills based on their use and opinions? I know like for CMANs some sound appealing but end up being a bad choice to invest in depending on the CMAN.

[Jeril]

Medium Shield Focus (mfocus)
Large Shield Focus (lfocus)
Tower Shield Focus (tfocus)
Shield Bash (bash)
Shield Charge (charge)
Shield Push (push)
Shielded Brawler (brawler)
Prop Up (prop)
Shield Forward (forward)
Shield Spike Focus (spikefocus)
Shield Spike Mastery (spikemastery)
Block the Elements (eblock)
Spell Block (spellblock)
Shield Mind (mind)
Protective Wall (pwall)
Shield Strike (strike)
Shield Strike Mastery (strikemastery)
Steely Resolve (resolve)
Phalanx (phalanx)

Damn, that is a pretty short list.

[Jeril]

Looking over the list, the shield focus ones are a given.

Shield bash/charge are known, you generally want one or the other but shield bash is also a prereq for shield strike/shield strike mastery.

Shield push is creature herding, you move them a room away so you don't have to deal with them. I can see this being useful for child rescue tasks, push them out of the room so you don't have to take the time to kill them.

Shield brawler is only a must if you brawl, obviously.

Propup - Gain a 1/3 chance per rank to avoid being knocked to the ground due to critical damage. Gain a +5 bonus per rank against Sweep, Tackle, Bullrush, and Hamstring attacks.
It has a max of 3 ranks, and that would give you a +15 bonus to defend against the above maneuvers which would be the same as having a rank in each, or 5 ranks of cunning defense. If nothing else lower endrolls mean less round time and less annoyance. Sweep and hamstring are used by bandits a lot, and you'll see a lot of all four attacks if you warcamp.

Shield forward - For 15 seconds after using an offensive shield attack, you gain a +10 per rank enhancive bonus to Shield Use ranks for defensive purposes.
It sounds kind of neat but doesn't seem worth it to me, at 3 ranks(max) you'd gain 16 DS in a situation where you'd most likely not need it anyway.

Shield spike focus - Reduces the penalty when using a spiked shield in conjunction with a shield attack by -5 per rank.
Might be something you'd learn, but not something I would do until I've gotten the other more useful things first.

Shield spike mastery - If you successfully block an attack with a spiked shield while in a forward or greater stance, you have a chance to reactively spike your foe. At Rank 1, this applies when blocking brawling or natural weapon attacks. At Rank 2, this applies when blocking any melee attack.
This all sounds neat but the creatures that swing at you the most are melee types and rarely something for a paladin to worry about. It would certainly be fun and amusing to see them spiked just because you blocked an attack though. If you are in GoS this could be handy in a warcamp though.

Block the elements - Reduces the damage dealt from elemental flares and ball spell explosions. Each additional rank provides for greater damage reduction, as do larger sized shields.
I forget if anyone said whether this helps with weapon fire or not, it helps with ithzir flares, but not kiramon, and meteor swarm though. Should also help with major ewave but I don't recall anyone mentioning if it does or not either.

Spell block - Allows the blocking of magical ball/bolt spells at 25% per rank of your normal block chance, provided that you are using an ensorcelled or anti-magical shield to do so. This would only be useful provided that these type of spells are able to get passed an AS/DS check against you. If you run around with a full spell up not an issue, if you hunt these creatures regularly and with just your own might be something you'd want.

Shield mind - Upon activation, you are placed in stance defensive and given a 10 second period where any warding spell cast upon you by another is automatically blocked (provided that you still are in stance defensive).
So, great against warding spells, you do need an ensorcelled/veil iron/krodera/kroderine to use it, and only if warding spells are actually an issue for you.

Protective wall - At Rank 1, you halve the Defensive Strength (DS) penalty imposed on stunned, webbed, immobile, unconscious, rooted, or prone group members. At Rank 2, this benefit also applies to yourself.
Not bad but how often do you find yourself in a situation where any of that is an issue? Or do you hunt with someone where it would be useful to save their bacon?

Shield strike - Launch a minor shield bash at your foe, followed by an immediate weapon strike at the same foe. The minor shield bash uses your ranks of Shield Bash for determining success, modified by your ranks in Shield Strike (-20 to success chance at Rank 1, -15 at Rank 2, -10 at Rank 3, -5 at Rank 4, and no penalty at Rank 5).
How often would you use something like this? I know for me and the hunting style I prefer, not often, feint/ambush, or feint/mstrike.

Shield strike mastery - When making a focused multi-attack, in addition to your normal strikes, you may end with a free minor shield bash.
Sounds neat and might be useful in the lower levels but once you reach the point where mstrike target=dead target, not so useful any more.

[Shaps]

Not really playing much anymore, but from all my testing I ended up deciding on certain ones:

1- Shield Focus
2- Protective Wall - GET THIS - HUGE BENEFIT
3- Prop Up - Nice passive CMAN protection
4- EBlock - GET THIS - Hate those get hit for 1 physical point and a 25 point flare nukes your neck and you die? With this you don't.
5- Shield Bash - I never used it, but nice for CMAN defense. With Feint and 1615/1630 is a wasted 5 seconds IMO.
6- Shield Spike/SpikeMastery - Love having this for the passive damage/stuns with a spiked shield.

[Whirlin]

Jeril's breakdown is amazing. Although, you'll need to consider other tricks you have available to you:

GoS's Sigil of Escape and 1635 really diminish the value of Protective Wall's effectiveness. I mean, sure, it'll help party members, but as far as helping you out specifically... meh

For Spell Block, This is really just about negating the AS/DS roll with BLOCK. The fact that you're using a shield will raise your ranged/bolt DS substantially, and this shouldn't be too much of an issue. It's really THW/Polearm users that have more ranged/spell DS problems than a Shield user.

[loxe]

I have a human paladin lvl 62 hunting stronghold one/ shield .m strike . Use tower shield focus shield strike, shield strike mastery, spell block. I use an 8x sancted blade with guiding light flares tier 5 ensorcelled. 10x sancted tower shield with plasma flares. Basically do a focused mstrike if it survives and is still standing you get a free shield bash to try and knock it over. Its really cool though when blade double flares ensorcell flares and shield flares all on the same mstrike.