Block mastery, tortoise stance, spike mastery testing.

[SpiffyJr]

My level 37 warrior with a tower shield and the following skills:

  Skill Name                         | Current Current
                                     |   Bonus   Ranks
  Armor Use..........................|     215     115
  Shield Use.........................|     214     114
  Combat Maneuvers...................|     178      78
  Blunt Weapons......................|     179      79
  Ambush.............................|      30       6
  Multi Opponent Combat..............|     160      60
  Physical Fitness...................|     178      78
  Survival...........................|      82      18
  Perception.........................|     136      38
  Climbing...........................|      70      15
  Swimming...........................|      50      10

Skill name             Mnemonic        Ranks
Combat Focus           focus             3
Specialization I       wspec1            3
Weapon Bonding         bonding           5
Combat Mobility        mobility          1
Parry Mastery          pmastery          1
Block Mastery          bmastery          2

Skill name             Mnemonic        Ranks
Tower Shield Focus     tfocus            3
Shield Bash            bash              4
Shield Spike Focus     spikefocus        2
Shield Spike Mastery   spikemastery      2
Deflection Training    dtraining         2
Tortoise Stance        tortoise          2

All tests were done against arctic titans and frost giants and data was only recorded while standing and in offensive.

[blocktest: -- swing result: 4.7% parry, 50.0% block, 5.4% flare, 402 swings]

Parry may or may not be accurate as I wasn't concerned with tracking it so I may not have got all the parry strings. The flare is for spikemastery and has 179 less swings than shown - the percentage is correct, but the swing count is 179 less (I added it half way through).

[Sheikh]

How many ranks can you get pin parry/block mastery, 3?

[celtani]

Just spitballing here, but this might be good info for understanding the tower shield modifier to block chance.

If Tortoise Stance is giving you a second chance to block at your normal block chance, then 50% combined chance to block means just about 30% base chance. (30% * 30% - (30%)^2 = 51%)

3x shield is about 15% chance, block mastery 2 is 10% chance, so your chance before the tower shield modifier is about 25%. So it's either a static 5% bonus (seems unlikely) or it's a multiplicative bonus of about 1.2. This is pretty close to the known tower shield DS modifier of 1.3, but it seems like there must be another factor. Strength and dexterity?

[SpiffyJr]

Just spitballing here, but this might be good info for understanding the tower shield modifier to block chance.

If Tortoise Stance is giving you a second chance to block at your normal block chance, then 50% combined chance to block means just about 30% base chance. (30% * 30% - (30%)^2 = 51%)

3x shield is about 15% chance, block mastery 2 is 10% chance, so your chance before the tower shield modifier is about 25%. So it's either a static 5% bonus (seems unlikely) or it's a multiplicative bonus of about 1.2. This is pretty close to the known tower shield DS modifier of 1.3, but it seems like there must be another factor. Strength and dexterity?

Strength bonus is 30 and dexterity bonus is 17.

[SpiffyJr]

How many ranks can you get pin parry/block mastery, 3?

5 in pin, 3 in mastery.

[Archigeek]

I've been testing out tortoise stance along with guard mastery, but haven't worked on it enough to see if it's worth it yet. I am very happy with Guard Mastery, and it would make sense that it would work well in conjunction with Tortoise Stance if you are hunting with a partner. I suppose the main question is, do you get double chances at blows aimed at your hunting partner as well?

[celtani]

Here's another theory: Shield size modifiers to block are identical to the shield size modifiers to melee DS, and are applied before static increases like Block Mastery.

3x shield use = 15% chance to block
15% * 1.3 tower shield = 19.5%
19.5% + 10% from block mastery rank 2 = 29.5%
29.5% applied twice = 50.3%

This is closer than my first guess.