Quite frankly, this is the worst advice for a new player I can think of. What you're advising a new guy to do is turtle up -- He learns nothing from that and dies constantly for his pains. You're setting a new guy up to become someone who moans on the forum about how unfair it is that the speed isn't right.
If he tries manual blocking and doesn't crutch on his shield constantly to block when he doesn't have to, then yes, he absolutely will die to more experienced players. However, he will learn to manual block in the process and will get a much better grasp of how the game plays out. As a 1Her you need to block a 2Her twice to get into their range and be able to actually swing -- If you have a shield up too, you're looking at 3 blocks before you can hit back and remember you'll be chasing them as you do it and giving up your swing turns to move slowly after them.
Good job generalizing way too much. First thing I teach my shielders is left swing counter attacking, and to NOT turtle up.
Get a long 1h sword and pull back a right swing, learn your range and timing and see how many 2h axes wanna play ball. You can keep them at bay for quite awhile. Learn how to do a few change up feigns into leftswing or overhead, that shit isnt rocket science...and about 100x easier than learning to manual parry. Learning with a shield doubles your average life expectancy. Noobie 2h'ers are pretty worthless on the other hand.
