Sword and Shield Challenge!

The_Titan_Tim

As the title suggests, I have a challenge for my fellow theorycrafters, and a fun one at that…

I challenge anyone interested to make a competitive PvP build with a Sword and Shield offense bar!

I have only one condition to this challenge… the build can only have two proc sets. (This includes monster sets and mythics)

Can’t wait to hear what some of you come up with, good luck!

Janni

I don't know how competitive you are looking for but I've been running sword n shield as my offense bar on most of my classes for a while now. It seems ok for open world Cyrodiil. But really if you want to kill tanks it seems to be more about the number of damage sources and less about raw stats since you want to drain their stam and circumvent their block limits. All that being said I still had fun with them!

For my DK I have vate 2hand on the backbar and on the front bar 4 pieces of witch knight, 3 agility. At all times I have 3 pieces of trainee. To top it off I use markyn for my mythic and domihaus for the shoulder. Decent stats at 30k hp, 20k mag and 35k stam. More than 6k weapon damage most of the time and I can get it to go close to 6.75k when vate is fully procced. The main offensive is obviously powerslam but I can work it in with a leap, molten whip, and shield bash. I also ran this setup on my warden last year and it did alright then but prolly not so hot now.

I also was trying out a shield build for my stamsorc the other night before I finally gave the game a break due the technical issues it's been having lately. I only ran it for a single night so I don't really know how well it stacks up. Maybe after an extended break I'll give it a run (assuming zos doesn't change the whole game again by then). Don't laugh too hard but it was 2 pieces of agility, 3 of trainee, domihaus shoulder, 5 hulking draugr, and death dealer's. All stam glyphs and all robust. even stam on the shield. Even out of combat I was sitting at 19k mag, 29k hp, and a whopping 51k stam and about 5k weapon damage on the frontbar. In this case it really helped actually since my biggest weakness was lack of pen so having puncture on my frontbar was nice. With Crystal weapon loaded up and could go into two power slams before having to refresh it. It was nice not having to swap bars to go into block mode and meant I could block right into my streak.

The_Titan_Tim

Janni wrote: »

…For my DK I have vate 2hand on the backbar and on the front bar 4 pieces of witch knight, 3 agility. At all times I have 3 pieces of trainee. To top it off I use markyn for my mythic and domihaus for the shoulder. Decent stats at 30k hp, 20k mag and 35k stam. More than 6k weapon damage most of the time and I can get it to go close to 6.75k when vate is fully procced. The main offensive is obviously powerslam but I can work it in with a leap, molten whip, and shield bash. I also ran this setup on my warden last year and it did alright then but prolly not so hot now...

Vateshran 2h backbar sounds interesting! A great way to weave in a medium for some big damage, I love it! Can’t wait to hear how the stam sorc works out.

Jarl_Ironheart

I ran a sword and board front bar with two handed back bar stam DK in under 50 Cyro and it was alot of fun and got me to rank 2 in the campaign. It's was great

The_Titan_Tim

Jarl_Ironheart wrote: »

I ran a sword and board front bar with two handed back bar stam DK in under 50 Cyro and it was alot of fun and got me to rank 2 in the campaign. It's was great

I’ve been finding DK has the most success with the S&B builds; makes you wonder how it would add up on a Templar or Necromancer. I know one Goliath has a bash damage buff.

tonyblack

Maras+rallying+sea serpent is the way to go this patch for most builds and would be bis for yours as well. The only consideration in that case would be back bar weapon whether you need damage (vateshran 2h/ice/ma 2h), defense + offense (brp dual wield/ma ice) or healing + sustain (vateshran/ma/asylum resto). You’d obviously need speed so gap close and race against time is a must. Not sure what class you need so I won’t go deep in skills.

LadyLavina

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

As the title suggests, I have a challenge for my fellow theorycrafters, and a fun one at that…

I challenge anyone interested to make a competitive PvP build with a Sword and Shield offense bar!

I have only one condition to this challenge… the build can only have two proc sets. (This includes monster sets and mythics)

Can’t wait to hear what some of you come up with, good luck!

5x Deadlands Demolisher
5x Knight Errant's Mail
1x Oakensoul
1x +pen or +wep/spell dmg monster piece

Would suggested a mix of reinforced/impen body pieces
Infused Bash-enchant jewelry

Maybe the Lord or Lover stones. Possibly the Tower if resources are a problem.

As for a class, if i did this I'd do it on a DK or maybe even a StamSorc but up to you.

Bashing and boosted S&b effectiveness. Pretty decent and features that lovely Knight-Errant's set from Blackheart Haven which is underrated in my opinion.

OBJnoob

I agree with @LadyLavina that Oakensoul is probably the best way to make use of a 1h/s for pvp.

Honestly it's not that hard to have decent damage on a shield bar. My magden has higher spell damage with his nirn sword/shield than he does with his nirn frost staff, for example.

The real problem is the abilities. So I wouldn't use knight errant personally, I just don't think the abilities are worth slotting especially on a 1-bar build. I would focus on a class that can pretty much use all class abilities instead. So DK, Warden, or NB probably.

Considering the bar space issue, I think a Warden might be the way to go. Simply because arctic blast would be very useful on a 1-bar build.

My skills might look something like this: vigor, bird of prey (no wait, I'm taking the minor evasion morph actually since I'm wearing oakensoul,) arctic blast, beetles, arterial burst, Dawnbreaker. Swap whatever spammable you like for arterial burst. Bird for more weapon damage... Silver shards if you want to go all-in on AoE and want to be more hybrid (after all your heavy attacks will be returning stamina.)

I don't know if proc sets are even important... I don't think you can fit a monster set and two 5pc since we only have one bar. Gonna want some offensive stats. Rallying cry is probably the best choice. 1pc magma Incarnate. Throw on a proc set if you want to for the 2nd set, maybe something that scales with HP/resistances to go with the shield theme. Hrothgar's, crimson, curse of doylemish.

Or a craftable set if you need more medium armor which you probably do. Deadlands demolisher... Or is it called deadlands assassin? Not the bash proc but the heavy attack proc. In the case of this and Curse of Doylemish perhaps worth noting that sword/shield heavy attacks are fairly fast and reliable.

(Edited to fix a weird grammatical error. Has misplaced my cursor and overwrote half a sentence.)

LadyLavina

OBJnoob wrote: »

The real problem is the abilities. So I wouldn't use knight errant personally, I just don't think the abilities are worth slotting especially on a 1-bar build. I would focus on a class that can pretty much use all class abilities instead. So DK, Warden, or NB probably.

Considering the bar space issue, I think a Warden might be the way to go. Simply because arctic blast would be very useful on a 1-bar build.

Well said, friend! I mostly picked Errant to fit the S&B vibe but I do kind of agree that in the modern game that's not the best choice. Not the worst, but not top of the class in competition.

I've never played a Warden, all this time (despite having one leveled to 16 since Morrowind chapter was launched ) but after reading and looking into your advice on the matter, I think you've put forth a really awesome suggestion there. I may need to steal it if I ever get off my *** and level that Warden.

OBJnoob wrote: »

Deadlands demolisher... Or is it called deadlands assassin? Not the bash proc but the heavy attack proc

That'd be this one, good sir @OBJnoob

OBJnoob

Why thank you 😀

Yeah, I think rallying cry, deadlands assassin, oakensoul, with a 1piece of whatever would be fairly do-able. Lots of spell damage there honestly. And with vigor, arctic blast, and bird of prey (minor evasion morph... Swift predator maybe??) And rallying cry I'd think it could survive okay too.

Use an ice staff instead of a shield and you've got yourself a real build I'd imagine. Deadlands assassin doesn't require a melee/martial heavy attacks just to be within 10 meters.

The_Titan_Tim

Amazing ideas. I’ve never ran Deadlands Assassin, it definitely sounds interesting, I bet if you were to combo that with the Vateshran 2h, your medium weaves would re-establish people’s hairlines!

gariondavey

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

Amazing ideas. I’ve never ran Deadlands Assassin, it definitely sounds interesting, I bet if you were to combo that with the Vateshran 2h, your medium weaves would re-establish people’s hairlines!

Deadlands assassin and vate 2h have hidden internal cds
If you proc one the other can't be procced for 1 second
Other things that are connected to these 2 are curse of doylemish and way of fire, a few others

The_Titan_Tim

gariondavey wrote: »

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

Amazing ideas. I’ve never ran Deadlands Assassin, it definitely sounds interesting, I bet if you were to combo that with the Vateshran 2h, your medium weaves would re-establish people’s hairlines!

Deadlands assassin and vate 2h have hidden internal cds
If you proc one the other can't be procced for 1 second
Other things that are connected to these 2 are curse of doylemish and way of fire, a few others

Thanks for reminding me, forgot about that change awhile ago, a reasonable one though as procs all happening simultaneously were a problem.