Just curious... I dont do parsing, or any of that junk so I am kinda ignorant on this. I have a 68 war with a 15/19 1hs with anger II and a 120 DD proc in main and this shield in off hand. Once I bash a few times would this be sufficient to hold agro in a group, where I could switch to another 1hs? Or should I keep the shield in my off hand permanantly?
As a side note I do not lose agro anymore when I keep it equipped.... Its great.
I have helped kill this guys 3 times on the Bert server and all 3 times he drop the shield. Killed him lastnight and he droped shield and Tunic pattern.
Wonderful thing about statistics... they aren't based on just your experience but the experience of everyone. This shield drops with an average frequency for most people who do this raid, so its listed as uncommon. I've seen at least 5 or 6 of these so I would tend to agree with those statistics, sorry your luck sucks but thats life.
Had it drop for us on a Raid earlier today, and from the people who had done the raid on him the previous two times, he'd dropped it one of those times, 2 out of 3 times isn't so Rare. Oh, the joys of the Random Number Generator.
The secret to using it is setting up "Equipment slots" dragged to your hotkeys area. This allows you to quickly swap weapons in and out.
So the puller brings in mob and I have my 1hs and this shield in. I get one bash off (usually right as slow is landing) and then swap in my offhand weapon while waiting for bash to refresh (about 5 seconds)
When bash refreshes swap shield in, hit bash, swap back out. You can basically do this for the entire fight, but usually two bashes will do it for holding agro.
Anyway, since doing this my early pre-slow agro is really nice. The mobs don't peel off onto the slower. (It's also nice to have the shield in early before the slow as the 54 AC, no ripostes on offhand, and 125 HP help)
I got this shield last week and I have to say I can hold aggro fine with it (Blackout in main hand), eventhough my Bashing skill is only 70 right now. The main aggro will probably come from the Blackout but I hunt in PoV and BoT a lot and never have bigger problems in exp groups there, so the shield compared to an offhand weapon (I normally use Exiled's Blade) isn't a big aggro-decrease, if any at all. And it makes everyone inspect me, warriors with a shield are so damn rare, everyone wants to see what it is. =D
Damn, I should have never stopped training that skill after I learned Dual Wield. But who would have guess I'd ever touch a shield again.
The following are facts. If you require huge pages of parses, send an email to jrenshaw38@yahoo.com and I'll be happy to dump them on you. Hopefully you will begin to see the importance of this shield.
Fact #1. PoP gods riposte *a lot*. They riposte for 1k minimum and usually much more. Using another weapon in your off-hand instead of this shield is asking for 30% more ripostes. Ask your clerics in the chain how they feel about that.
Fact #2. I have pitted two warriors against each other unbuffed with about the same atk and stats using several different weapons. For the testing, neither warrior was taunting ie. trying to pull aggro from one another. This keeps it solely aggro based on what the weapons are doing. One warrior would wield the weapon/shield combo and the other would go weapon/boc for 5 fights and then we would switch sides so the other war had the weapon/shield and the other would have weapon/boc. For each of the following, Weapon + Shield held aggro over Weapon + Blade of Carnage *every single time* for each warrior: Blade of Carnage (with Hategiver in off-hand), Hategiver, The Rotting Fist, Wrath's Edge, and Tarantella. Please note that these are all proccing weapons. I pulled the mob in question every time with Mark of Kings so the fight started with the mob paged at one to a neutral party (being me).
Fact #3. Now when you are using a non-proccing weapon this changes. Using Ancient Pristmatic weapons (which do have a proc yes but they are non-aggro), the warrior with weapon + shield would begin the fight with aggro, but would eventually lose it to the warrior with weapon + BoC everytime. For fun, we used a small proccing weapon (Blackened Acrylia), and the aggro was switching back and forth quite a bit. Our fun experiment turned out to point out sometime very important : The shield boosted the aggro on the BA's lifetap so much that is was equivalent to the off-hand BoC's generated aggro! Imagine now switching in something like a Bloodfrenzy and how much the aggro boost would be (hint : it's exponential).
Fact #4. Although it has been proven that AC affects damage mitigation by a great deal in PoP and there is no hard cap on AC in PoP, there are lots of people that still believe in the HP is everything school of thought. I will tackle both schools of thought (everyone agrees that resists rock). I challenge anyone to find any off-hand weapon for a warrior that has 15sta and 125hp that coming from this stage in PoP (that means mini-raids in tier3 zones, so if you point out the Plane of Time blade from RZ I will stab you). Also try to find one that has 15 save vs fire, cold, and magic. Actually, I'll save you the trouble and just tell you that weapons like that don't exist. The best you are going to get is lots of 100hp 10save weapons from the Ssra and VT area and maybe some 110-120 if you are taking down tier 1 and 2 flag mobs / gods. Now for those of us that cheerish intelligent data analysis, find me an off-hand weapon that has 54 AC on it. Go ahead and include Quarm on your search if you like. It does not exist or hasn't dropped yet.
So, in closing, I urge any warrior that is looking to some-day MT for raids to try to obtain this shield. If you don't think you will ever be in the position to MT (whether designed that way or from deaths where you take over) then you are right, this shield is completely worthless for you. What are you doing looking at this post? I'm sure there are Windblade threads out there that need people to post on them how much bullshiz it is they don't drop off orc pawns and moss snakes so you can get one. If you think that you have developed a better testing method that some-how proves mine wrong, feel free to post below mine. Thank you for your time.
I've had this shield for a while now, and i dont know where you people can come out saying that this item is worthless. You cannot be further from the truth...i play a lvl 65 barbarian warrior, and when i am the MT for my guild i ghetto bash with the shield. I pull massive aggro with it...i tested it one day...i let a group fight a mob 40% down with a lvl 65 warrior taunting and i engaged and stole aggro bashing/taunting/procing my BOC. If you dont have one of these shields and your trying to say its worthless you need to get one...you will find out that this item is FAR from useless. I dont usually use the shield when i am in an exp group because you want dps to kill mobs faster to gain exp faster or whatnot...but when i am on raids, and im tanking mobs that hit for 1k+ its great. I dont eat nearly as many ripostes, and when my Blade of Carnage procs one time and i bash...i will have aggro through the whole fight. BTW, it doesnt drop off a mini, it drops off the main boss in the one of the towers. O and my best crip with the shield was like almost 400...=P Peace
I could have swore taunt(when it works) puts you +1 higher than the highest person on the list. The bash then puts you a lil higher than normal from your slam, then if you proc hate then you just held it. Try it out sometime. just taunt a mob that someone is beating on
I fully agree with balink. The people who are saying that this shield is horrible, and why woudl a warrior give up his precious 2nd weapon, are the ones who DONT have this shield. Lvl 65 warrior of morrel thule. When i got this shield in a raid, i was very very skeptical as to the aggro i would have with using a shield, instead of my offhand proccer. So, in a guildy group, a druid came up with a very interesting way to test out its aggro. Bear in mind,.. i have NO HATE PROCCER. No blade of carnage, or hammer from poi dragon, just sword of the bloodsworn in primary, and this shield now. I grouped with the druid, we went to Halls of Honor in PoP. He snare pulled a mob, double dotted it, snared it again, rooted it. Then snared TWELVE TIMES, nuked 2 times,.. THEN he started kiting the mob, i was supposed to run behind the mob WHILE he continued kiting and snaring and snaring and snaring,.. and with my two weapons, was to try to pull aggro from him, and hold it for the duration of the fight. When duel wielding my 2 one handers, i wasnt even able to GET aggro until the mob was down to 53% life, then as soon as id get it, it would immediatly be taken back by the kiting druid. Did this same exact thing, same number of snares, dots, roots ect, for 5 mobs. THEN switched to the shield. Aggro was almost instant in comparrison. Druid kited in the exact same way, and within 5 second of the mob coming to me, I had aggro from the still kiting druid. And held it. The druid was chain throwing eveyr single big uber nuke and dot and snare that he could on the mob. Aggro broke back to the druid one time when it was at 73% life, but after 1 taunt and 1 bash,... i held aggro for the rest of the fight. Very,.... very big difference from duel wielding. I was duel wielding a 75dd stun proccer, and 175dd stun proccer,.. and using the shield is much much much better aggro control. Try using an item, or get in touch with someone who uses it, before you bash it. I doubt you will find a single person who has attained this shield, that doesnt have tremendeous respect for it.
LOL for those of you who think warriors don't use 2handers, all I can say is that I see a lot of MTs using windblades and keeping aggro pretty well.
For those of you that think that bash can't take aggro... I'm a frikkin cleric and I can take aggro if my bashes land (and all I have done so far in the fight is bash... no healing or casting of any sort... just sit, stand, bash, sit, stand, bash... call it the cleric bash dance), I don't keep it for long but I do take it.
It dropped last night and the consensus seemed to be that with an aggro proccing 1hander, this shield should make aggro control much easier.
As far as how tough it is to get... I don't know how rare it is (I have seen it drop but I haven't killed this guy often enough to know how often he drops it) but the toughest part about getting to him is that everyone keeps falling off the frikking platforms and have to run back from zonein. The mob has casts an AE 800pts stun (so don't cast long casting time spells (like CH) and think they are likely to land, sure you can try it from time to time but at least every other attempt is going to be interrupted), so keep one healer out of AE range so that he can run in and heal the tank if all the other healers are stunned (you can kinda rotate, one cleric fastheals until he gets stunned then another swoops in until he gets stunned...). He can also heal himself. So keep pushing him.
Edit: Oh yeah and make sure you have your MR pumped up and you have levitation of some sort on everyone otherwise the gravity flux will make life difficult for you.
Im not one to depick but please think about your strategy and how you promote yourself... You bash, minor stun agro.. then you sit down? Well honestly that would **** me off to watch you sit..i think your getting your agro from sitting 90% of the time.... but yes stunning is a good way to get agro if you can keep it.
Yeah I don't make a habit of it. My point is that bash can create a lot of aggro and that from what I have seen these aggro shields make a huge difference in keeping aggro on the tank. Let make it as simple as I can. I don't care if the Main Tank has a DPS of a moss snake, if they can hold aggro well enough that people can just unload on the mob then they are doing their job. Keeping that tank alive is ours.
Aye, sitting is a good way to stop the spin.... but make sure its a quick double tap of the sit/stand button... sit for just a fraction of a second to long, and you might just find yerself the center of Chaoswind's attention.
I've got this shield and the agro is miles better when I use it. I even took agro from a Pali on a couple of occasions.
I was dubious too, but was pursuaded to get it and try it out,otherwise it would have rotted, Well i tried it and wow was i surprised. I was using for taunt weapons, the hammer from the POI Dragon and a shadow heart, and sometimes a windblade. Now using the hammer and this shield, my agro is so much better. I'ts made the hammer's taunt much more powerfull. I just need to get my bash skill up, its only 50 atm :) Never thought at 65 id be using a sheild :)
ok .. if you read about 3/4 down the page you run into a guy who rips into another guy who says that little warriors cant bash (sorry gnomes/WE's etc...). anywho, shortly after, another dude says that it can, in fact, be done if youre not lazy and quick with your fingers.
now .. my question is, would it be feasable for the duel wielding small warrior .. or even the large warrior ... to quickly switch in this shield to bash, then switch back?
now i play a low lv war on occasion, and the delay on kick and bash seem to be roughly =. it seems to me that if the warrior was REALLY that worried about aggro and had this shield rotting away in his backpack he could switch it out. aparently verant has made this desirable for a reason (adding the taunt and whatnot), so therefore there must be SOME good use for it...
at very least your missing 1 second of offhand dps for 1 second of higher ac/hp/stats with a possibly major aggro increase.
"ok .. if you read about 3/4 down the page you run into a guy who rips into another guy who says that little warriors cant bash (sorry gnomes/WE's etc...)."
We can't Slam. We can Bash after level 6.
"now .. my question is, would it be feasable for the duel wielding small warrior .. or even the large warrior ... to quickly switch in this shield to bash, then switch back?"
Ghetto bashing. In fact, it doesn't take much work or skills or speed either. The easiest way works like this...
1) Drag your secondary melee slot to a hotbutton.
2) Set up a Bash hotbutton.
3) Hold your shield on your cursor. When Bash opens, click the shield in, hit bash, click your weapon back in.
If you're like me, you already have your hand hovering over your keys kicking or taunting, so it doesn't take much additional work. You just need to get the rhythm down. After just a couple of hours doing it, I didn't even need to watch Bash to see it open anymore and the timing was reflexive.
Of course, if you can't spare the hotbutton(like I can't), you can do what I did and make a custom UI that has my secondary melee slot(among other things)next to my hotbutton bank. Much easier on the swiching, and much easier to dump the shield from my cursor in a hurry.
Veteran Yaen B`zhen Overlord of the Lightbearer Inverse Logic, Povar
I currently use 2 scepters of destruction when MA, was wondering whether swapping out offhand SoD for this shield would retain same aggro. The AC and HP sure are tempting, however I tried using the furious bash 2 shield and there was noticebly less aggro generated than dual SoDs. Any opinions?
I have this shield, as an MT it rocks. What I don't see listed here is the effect: Furious Bash IV Increase Spell/Bash Hate by 40% Target: PC/NPC Targeted Duration: 100 ticks (10 minutes)
Basically, if your main weapon procs an aggro taunt this shield seriously increases your aggro, i.e. any weapon with Enraging Blow (and others but that seems to be the hot one right now)
The nifty thing I like about it is that if you are MT you use your aggro weap, if you are an add tank you don't - you can still keep aggro and you are noticeably easier to heal.
Make a level 1 warrior and type /shield when you are not targeting anything. It will tell you all about the ability.
In summary: If I shield someone and the hit was for 100, they would only take 50 damage and I would take 75 damage. This is the price for shielding a person.
Now you can reduce the amount of the damage you take from the hit you absorbed by adding a shield. The ac on the shield you carry is the base for reducing the damage.
The FB4 component to this particular shield increases agro from your bash (hey its a hit as well as a stun, and stun adds hate) as well *** adding agro from spells ( ie EB, nuke procs, dots etc.)
Mr. Booguhr, there are plenty of high agro 1h weapons for warriors.
For those of you wanting to use /shield for xp groups I suggest a hotbutton:
/assist /pause 2 /shield
Then you have to hit f8 to retarget the mob or point and click with the pointer but it works and you shield whatever the mob is hitting. Use it mostly on enchanters that spent all their aa on illusions instead of spell casting subtlety. Of course for that to work you have to coax them to actually move once in a while to debuff next to you...for some reason thats like asking them to run to the sebilis bubble and KEI your twink.
This is a worthless iteam i would not use this as a MT.I am an ogre tank and trust me bash does not do that much damage by no means would i replace my off-hand weapon with a shield even with this effect it has no chance to generate any where as much agro as a good off hand procer. There would be no way that with a shield that a MT could keep enough agro to 1 keep mob of the clerics 2 off the chainsaw classes like monks and rogue. The ONLY way this iteam will ever be ANYGOOD for a tank is if verant finally give us tanks some good agro 1h weaps. I mean come on as it is how often do u see a tank use a 2 hand weapon let alone a shield because we are working our tails off to keep that agro off the monk or rogue. If verant wants to keep the tanks in the take the damage and not do so much damage fine give us access to some 1h that have a nice agro increase only proc that way we stay at same damage out put but can use a shield and keep that agro like WE MUST.
On high end bossmobs you see a Warrior use 2hs EVERY time because the riposte damage is ABSURD on the 1hs/1hb weapons they own. Yes, I agree hp's ARE everything, AC is second... now look at this with 200 hps AND 54 base AC... and think how many fewer ripostes for 1800 you will have with this in your secondary and how much more hate that EB item will give you... and do the math.
Do you realize if one handed weapons were put into EQ that could generate enough aggro so that an off hand wasn't required people would STILL use an offhand weapon and even further guarantee aggro on that warrior to the point where no one will ever have to watch aggro again.
SOE can NOT put in any weapons that are INTENDED to be used with a shield, because people won't ALWAYS use them with a shield. To be honest, sheild's are so badly look down upon (in the hands of a Duel Wielder) that if a weapon was publicly stated to be created just for shield tanking, people would completely ignore it.
I mean, PoP boss mobs have been parsed to have significant less DPS against a tank with a higher AC. Are people going to ignore the trend of "hp is everything" and start working on AC again? NO WAY. "hp is everything" is so well burnt in to the brains of EVERY warrior beyond level 45 that there will be no substitutes at higher levels.
A shield would have to have 500~ hp, 300ac, and no less then 100to all saves to be considered worth using over an offhand weapon. Not to mention something much higher then 40% increase of bash hate. Maybe a proc on a shield for when you bash. Or even going back to Shield of the Unicorn days, so shields would be weapons too, in which case you could have shields that proced EB. a 5/20 shield with EB proc is going to be used, albeit rarely. And it will HAVE to have MUCH higher stats then this shield, maybe not as high as the example i just gave earlier though.
Its obvious the reason this was put in for... To be used with the /shield ability they gave warriors since all/most shield that are WAR usable are also PAL/SK/ect... usable as well.
#REDACTED,
Posted:Feb 13 2003 at 8:29 AM, Rating: Unrated, (Expand Post) "Make sure you know what you're talking about before you post misinformation."
A: You confuse the people that come here looking for information and lower overall quality of information that can be found here if you continuously post about things you don't have a clue about.
B: You make yourself look like a complete moron to those people that know better.
As for wanting to be thought all-knowing, hardly. I corrected a peice of misinformation on the site, that doesn't mean I know everything... far from it. There's many things in this game that even the most knowledgeable player has no idea about.
The biggest fear stopping a Warrior from using a shield is the lowered aggro. We have to work hard enough as it is to keep aggro from all the 15/18 monks and rogues out there. Increasing aggro with this shield is a step in the right direction, but putting item fixes in that only the very top end Warriors can get their hands on isn't very satisfactory for those of us who won't ever get to see an item like this.
Gotta go with taygarr on this one, BoT is a pretty simple zone. A previous guild of mine would regularly take out Tower Minis (which drop this) with 3 Groups of lvl 60-65 players mostly in Velious era gear. I'm guessing any guild with monks weilding 15/18 weapons could obtain this with realitive ease.
I am curious to hear if anyone has had good results from MT'ing with this shield?
My question about this whole thing is, how much aggro does a bash normally generate? 140% of 0 is still 0, if you know what I mean... If bash generated a satisfactory amount of aggro, I could see this being very useful - Just have a taunting/enraging blow effect in your primary, that does most of the aggro work for a warrior anyway.
dont count yourself out of this item ) theres quite a few lvling in bot ..and its not a fourth tier item.. lvl up and play hard =) and you neva know gl! taygarr wiz of the 61st season the seventh hammer
Can you bash emp ssra without a ssra bane shield? What about slam and ssra bane shoulders? I've never tried to do either...not that I could even if I had the key to get to him. I think this shield will be for the warrior that absolutely has to have aggro>damage such as boss mobs etc. In aa exp grind group I can't see switching out a 1h weapon for anything.
Just a note. As a 61 cleric, I bash damage up to 89 with a bash skill of 200 (180 before lvl 50). This is under the new bash damage table.
Now, with a warrior bash skill at 240(over lvl 50) and the new bash damage table, I wonder if it is now feasible to see more 1h weapon/shield weilding warriors out there.
To add, I think a successful bash for damage will interrupt an attack..a stun for one round. May be an idea. Do about the same damage and stop an enemy's attack.
i have crit with a shield as a SK for over 160dmg using sarnak battle shield. what is it on the shield that determines dmg, its ac? as for warriors using this, i say more power to them. not that ive really seen too many warriors use shields. its rare to see a warrior using 2h wepons still.
also to mention that verant has said (either hinted or straight out stated) that shields help to alleave some of the dmg sustained. it might actually help a warrior out on tanking to have a shield to block with instead of the usual dodge, parry, reposite and such. will just have to wait and see what happens, only time will tell.
Then you're a really sorry tank, period. Bash interrupts spellcasters and can save a raid when a mob trys to gate, let alone an exp group.
Quote: "bashing is the skill of using ones body or shield to stun an opponent. A successful bash will interrupt a caster from completing their spells. bashing also gives you a few free attacks whilst the enemy reorientates themself"
Notice it says body OR shield, you don't have to use a shield to bash. Now get back to practicing. This is the one drawback with boon, it prevents bashing (and some people complain of seasick :P).
And I have watched a woodelf warrior contiuosly dual wield and bash at the same time. How? I watched very closely and noticed that he was swapping in a shield for only a moment just for the bash and then went back to the secondary weapon. I guess that kind of skill is only shown in the elite, not the lazy. It IS able to be done though.
For the puny race warrior types out there(any that are not ogre, troll or barb), kicks at level 55+ are usable for interrupting spellcasting. The usual range of mobs are exempt from this (eg Giants in Kael)
With some of the 1h weapons that are starting to come out, and more possibly, more 1h warrior weapons with a ratio less than 1, i could actually see a warrior using this. What i could see happening as well is having hotkeys set up (or using one of the new UI's) having this ready to switch into offhand to bash
As I see from many other peoples posts, Warriors are not really meant to be huge damage dealers, they are supposed to TAKE the hits, not really dish them out, and since the ac is very nice and the stats decent, I can see a warrior using this.
in an xp situation, every point of dps counts towards more xp gained. using shield doesnt help.
in a raid situation, every eb proc helps keep aggro and unless i hear about some reliable source telling me this shield does more aggro then a boc or sum. i see this on multiple dates with the destroy button once the warrior who lost the roll and had to loot it, needs bank space.
Man, I wish I could get far enough back in the EQLive archives to pull out the article on the exp fixes back when they made it so pets wouldn't steal exp and they changed group experience. Damage per second has nothing to do with how much exp you get, otherwise enchanters would refuse to buff so they could save mana for nuking. No, experience is doled out equally, adjusted by level. So, it may look like DPS made a difference but actually it's that you're three levels higher than everybody else. Naturally you deal more damage because you're a higher level, but it's the level, not the damage that gets you the exp.
And oh yeah, the other exp modifiers they left in game also come into play, race/class. DPS is just DPS.
I can definitely see a warrior using this on a raid when 15 Rangers/Rogues/Monks are wailing away on a big mob at more DPS than the warrior can do, so he bashes, which stuns to interrupt spell casting, and holds aggro, makes the mob pause it's hitting. "Small" race warriors will love this!
I think when he said DPS helps XP, I think he meant in that the higher the group DPS, the faster you kill hence the more mobs you can kill in a given period thus more XP earned. Its not necessarrily correct, as downtime isnt measured. The question I have with this item is whether a warrior wielding this holds agro better or worse than duel-wielding. Unfortunately, since Warriors seem to have significant issues with holding agro already, if this reduces that ability, it will NEVER be used.