High Strength Shielder

[Cyber]

I kind of agree with phaze here. One of the main advantages to being a shielder is that you can deal with multiple opponents more easily and for that you need high athletics. I have been going for 18/18 most of the time which imo is the best build for a shielder. This generation i tryed going 21/15 but i feel like im way too slow, almost useless.

[Toffey]

This idea seemed all well and good until I hit level 20 and remembered how long it takes to get to level 30. Then I remembered how long it takes to get from 30 to 31. I'm not too keen on playing 50 hours of cRPG with 3 athletics and shield.

Back to some sensible build, then. 

[Michael]

Ramses and Cyber certainly are hell on wheels for getting kills as shielders.

They usually have at least two or three 'support' guys with them what gives them the opportunity to fight the opponents 1 vs 1.

A strength shielder with 8 power strike, relatively long weapon and big shield is in 1 vs 1 good against everyone except high agi kick slashers.

But once you get seperated from your pack, or those guys get killed, a str build shows its weaknesses. Many 2handers/ polearm guys have 8 and more ath, you are too slow to chase rangers efficiently, and melee in a 1 vs x is difficult.

When you want to go on your own, flank, kill rangers and stuff, I think a relatively fast build is the better choice. You better have two weapons with you though.
Elite Scimitar against light armored opponents, and steel pick or flanged mace against tincans.
You probably wont get so many kills, but keeping a whole group of enemies busy for a while, killing some and injuring some more might be more fun than sticking with the mob all the time.

[yedrellow]

They usually have at least two or three 'support' guys with them what gives them the opportunity to fight the opponents 1 vs 1.

A strength shielder with 8 power strike, relatively long weapon and big shield is in 1 vs 1 good against everyone except high agi kick slashers.

Kick slashing is something you can deal with pretty easily with proper practice. I recommend that if you have a problem with kickslashing that you practice with moving to the side of opponent rather than directly at them and hitting them from the side. Kicking on the lead is far more difficult than kicking when someone runs directly towards you. With time you should learn how to dodge kicks without moving directly to the side of them (something best practiced on native against kickslashers). This is because most kick-slashing techniques depend upon the following:

Attack, move back momentarily using s, kick, slash.

This technique opens up a vulnerability if the non-kicker does not follow their backwards movement directly. If someone is an agility fighter you may even be able to 1 hit them by getting around their block and end the fight straight away.

I don't believe that people should forget the idea of using this build with some of the higher speed weapons as opposed to the high range weapons proposed by others in this thread. Using a liuyedao with 102 speed should counteract some of the negatives experienced by having lower weapon proficiency. Its high base damage and speed should both prevent speed based suppression and allow you to deal with armour. A liuyedao at 3 powerstrike in the right hands can kill plate users, it will do fine at 11 powerstrike. However you should only use this if you have experience in fighting when outranged, which is not true of a lot of players.

My opinion of the build as a whole is that you will probably be too slow. A shielder needs to be able to close range on balanced build backpeddlers, so it would probably be preferable to downgrade the strength to around 24 and bring athletics up to 4 or 5.  You may be able to alleviate some of the issues with speed by using quite light armour, but very few people can pull off a low armor strength character, so it is probably inadvisable. The only time where I'd see this character being more useful than others would be in massed fighting situations, where you are quite able to deal a lot of damage and survive.

[Cyber]

They usually have at least two or three 'support' guys with them what gives them the opportunity to fight the opponents 1 vs 1.

A strength shielder with 8 power strike, relatively long weapon and big shield is in 1 vs 1 good against everyone except high agi kick slashers.

But once you get seperated from your pack, or those guys get killed, a str build shows its weaknesses. Many 2handers/ polearm guys have 8 and more ath, you are too slow to chase rangers efficiently, and melee in a 1 vs x is difficult.

When you want to go on your own, flank, kill rangers and stuff, I think a relatively fast build is the better choice. You better have two weapons with you though.
Elite Scimitar against light armored opponents, and steel pick or flanged mace against tincans.
You probably wont get so many kills, but keeping a whole group of enemies busy for a while, killing some and injuring some more might be more fun than sticking with the mob all the time.

In the occasions that i still play in eu1 or any larger server i almost always go solo and never have any support guys with me, unless we are playing together with a big Fallen team, can't speak for ramses.

I don't see why you think that a high strength shielder is good in 1v1 though. What high STR gives you is more dmg and hp, this should help out a lot more when in a middle of a battle where you might need your dmg to kill off opponents faster or IF to survive some unexpected hits. High agy shielder seems to have all the advantages in 1v1.

I do agree with you that melee 1vsx is easier with fighting multiple opponents aswell. High STR build imo just has the advantage of managing to kill opponents off with fewer hits turning the battle and tank more dmg. ( which can both be really important )

yedrellow: Kick slashing is a problem for a 1h, no matter how much you practice agains't it, specially with a STR build and heavier armor. You might be able to avoid kicks of many people and actually get to their side and hit them, but better players won't let you do that. With good 2h or polearm players i usually either try to keep a balance of trying to stay out kick range, and inside 1h weapon range which can be a real pain, specially if i have a str build so they are faster then me, or just completely facehugging them in which case i need to hope that they miss their kicks.

[yedrellow]

In the occasions that i still play in eu1 or any larger server i almost always go solo and never have any support guys with me, unless we are playing together with a big Fallen team, can't speak for ramses.

I don't see why you think that a high strength shielder is good in 1v1 though. What high STR gives you is more dmg and hp, this should help out a lot more when in a middle of a battle where you might need your dmg to kill off opponents faster or IF to survive some unexpected hits. High agy shielder seems to have all the advantages in 1v1.

I do agree with you that melee 1vsx is easier with fighting multiple opponents aswell. High STR build imo just has the advantage of managing to kill opponents off with fewer hits turning the battle and tank more dmg. ( which can both be really important )

yedrellow: Kick slashing is a problem for a 1h, no matter how much you practice agains't it, specially with a STR build and heavier armor. You might be able to avoid kicks of many people and actually get to their side and hit them, but better players won't let you do that. With good 2h or polearm players i usually either try to keep a balance of trying to stay out kick range, and inside 1h weapon range which can be a real pain, specially if i have a str build so they are faster then me, or just completely facehugging them in which case i need to hope that they miss their kicks.

Look I understand why you may think kick-slashes are impossible to avoid, but it really is a footwork issue that can be worked on, regardless of low athletics. If you personally have a problem with kickslashes then it is something you can work on. Jump in a native duel server with a fighting pick and you should eventually learn how to deal with kick-slashing. If you're unwilling to practice on native, duel with a 40 reach hammer on your local crpg duel server until you learn how to avoid kicks. If you are facehugging them, then of course you're going to get kickslashed, but that doesn't mean that it is impossible to close distance. I am personally quite capable of dodging and punishing kickslashers of all qualities that I have encountered. With lower athletics it becomes harder, but really, the same principles can be applied to dodging and otherwise avoid kicks.

[Xant]

Yeh, agree with Yedrellow. Kickslashes are just a nasty surprise when you come across a good player after killing lots of less good players. After the first kick, I'll just adapt accordingly and it really isn't a problem avoiding them. You have to be a bit less aggressive, though.

[Cyber]

Look I understand why you may think kick-slashes are impossible to avoid, but it really is a footwork issue that can be worked on, regardless of low athletics. If you personally have a problem with kickslashes then it is something you can work on. Jump in a native duel server with a fighting pick and you should eventually learn how to deal with kick-slashing. If you're unwilling to practice on native, duel with a 40 reach hammer on your local crpg duel server until you learn how to avoid kicks. If you are facehugging them, then of course you're going to get kickslashed, but that doesn't mean that it is impossible to close distance. I am personally quite capable of dodging and punishing kickslashers of all qualities that I have encountered. With lower athletics it becomes harder, but really, the same principles can be applied to dodging and otherwise avoid kicks.

I don't think kickslashes are impossibole to avoid. I don't end up getting kickslashed very often, i have gotten used to avoiding them pretty well, but it is not something that you can avoid very easily like you claim agains't very good players. Specially if you have higher str character.

For example we recently spent some time with phyrex duelling. I had 21/15 build and i believe he had 15/24 and i had a lot heavier armor. Since he had much higher agy and lighter armor he was much faster then me, and if i was not moving foward constantly he could easily get out of my reach. So what i had to do was trying to keep a balance between being in a 1h weapon reach for your hit and staying out of kick reach, which is not very easy if you are a lot slower. It can be done ofc, but it's not something that is easy agains't very good players. Other option is trying to get close and just try to be as unpredictable with your movement  as possible and hope that he misses the kick, also if he misses it while you are close to him it is a lot easier for you to get at hes side and slash him before he can recover. Once again, i don't think kickslashing is impossibole to avoid but if you really are playing someone who knows what hes doing, it is not something that you can deal very easily, atleast with a high str build imo.

Also, more then half of the time i have been playing warband in the past 2 years i have been playing native aswell so i have decent amount of experience there. Native and cRPG are really different imo, and you can't really compare them on this matter. In there you all have equal stats, in this thread i think we are mainly talking about STR build with what imo it is a lot harder to avoid kicks, specially agains't high agy characters.

[San]

Kicks are definitely a problem when you use one of the short 70-80 length weapons, too. It's difficult to both avoid the kick and be in a prime position where the opponent can't dodge or block anyways. But higher strength shielders are meant to be tanks anyways.

Hammers also give me a lot of trouble if I'm using a weapon below 75 length if the player has decent skill.


After asking about the builds of current shielders topping the charts in NA, all of them were strength-oriented (21/15 or 24/15). The mixture of good IF, PS, shield, and decent athletics allows the shielder to tank a few hits without being too slow or too weak.

I'm sure there are still many agi-based shielders who do very well, but I think they are in the minority at the moment.