they're great for some builds, just need to pick right gear and skills

2 handet is good if you will go for an late game krit/warfare build. otherwise they are bad. you get more stats from using 2 one handet swords or wands.
you can also later have an 2 handet with 20% krit and euqip it on an mage with the talent that makes your abilities krit.

but both is more relevant after act 1.
at lvl 5 it is way better to have 2 wands equipt or a shild/dager ect.

All in isn't all that good tbh. 3 AP is just too costly for a single hit skill (specially considering you can only have up to 6 AP). You'll be better off using the much better warfare skills or even just attacking. Also make sure to equip weapons at your level, lower level equipment tends to fall off hard after a couple levels, but make sure not to equip weapons higher than your level otherwise you lose accuracy on your attacks and skills.

dual wielding is better early but 2 handed gets really strong eventually. You can make it strong early as well if you get dallis hammer.

sword and shield is very bad

I don't recommend using all in most of the time. Make sure you have peace of mind active and focus on CC and damage skills. I also recommend using some Polymorph skills like tentacle and Medusa Head which petrifies anyone close to you if they have no magic armor.

Opprinnelig skrevet av Senki:

sword and shield is very bad

Why?

I keep seeing people say focus on armor and ignore CON. So a shield with its armor restore ability sounds awesome.

Opprinnelig skrevet av MeniliteZ:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Senki:

sword and shield is very bad

Why?

I keep seeing people say focus on armor and ignore CON. So a shield with its armor restore ability sounds awesome.

Because as a melee fighter you half your damage and damage wins you fights.
Once you break the enemy's physical armor you can knock them down, 2-3 turns in a row, negating all actions they could take.

Anyone with Geomancy 1 can use Fortify to restore physical armor.
Anyone with Hydromancy 1 can use Frost armor to restore magic armor.

You could say that giving mages a shield is the best option. This way they can restore your fighters armor types, are still save and they usually use spells, so no need to use a weapon for damage.

Edit: Enemies also focus characters that do the most damage, so later the classic tank just gets ignored.

Opprinnelig skrevet av MeniliteZ:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Senki:

sword and shield is very bad

Why?

I keep seeing people say focus on armor and ignore CON. So a shield with its armor restore ability sounds awesome.

shields are good early game where the extra armour is enough to require an extra hit before your guys are able to be crowd controlled. I think people seriously under rated how good bouncing shield is as a ranged poke on your melee guy before you get 3 movement abilities on everyone.

Two-Handers are objectively the best melee style late game because their damage scales the best and damage is king in this game.

I'm not a fan of dual wielding at all, DW scoundrel is pretty strong early game but doesn't seem to scale well.

I tend to always go two-handed melee + Archer + Pyro/Geo mage + Hydro/Aero mage, 2:2 split is fine, and it's a good way to not have everyone competing for the same stats on items (everyone fighting for intelligence in a mage party or everyone fighting for warfare in a phys party).

Opprinnelig skrevet av Lasagna:

Opprinnelig skrevet av MeniliteZ:

Why?

I keep seeing people say focus on armor and ignore CON. So a shield with its armor restore ability sounds awesome.

shields are good early game where the extra armour is enough to require an extra hit before your guys are able to be crowd controlled. I think people seriously under rated how good bouncing shield is as a ranged poke on your melee guy before you get 3 movement abilities on everyone.

Two-Handers are objectively the best melee style late game because their damage scales the best and damage is king in this game.

I'm not a fan of dual wielding at all, DW scoundrel is pretty strong early game but doesn't seem to scale well.

I tend to always go two-handed melee + Archer + Pyro/Geo mage + Hydro/Aero mage, 2:2 split is fine, and it's a good way to not have everyone competing for the same stats on items (everyone fighting for intelligence in a mage party or everyone fighting for warfare in a phys party).

Bouncing shield, my beloved. This skill alone makes it worth keeping shield on my warrior right now.

Also, its my go for party in dos1.
Here, i went for my favorite characters in fort joy with their default classes, so my party is a mess and i hope there will be an option to respec this trash xd

When people say focus on armor over HP, its usually referencing healing abilities. Meaning if you need healing, use Fortify or Armor of Frost before things like Restoration. Get that armor back first. Max HP is irrelevant entirely.

As for shields being bad, mages use them just fine. They're just not good on melee builds because that extra durability comes at the cost of damage and the less damage you deal, the slower you CC the enemy which leads to more incoming damage and the incoming damage is pretty much always going to be more than you gain from the increased durability of the shield. Also, if you ask me, shields up is trash. If it were just 1 AP it'd be alright, but its just too costly to regain the armor of your shield.

Really what it comes down to is that any benefit you can find with weapon and shield you can get from a different setup at less cost with more benefits overall. Seriously, any one benefit you can think of that sword and board gets can be gotten with a different build that is just vastly superior. You can make sword and board work, its just not good comparatively to other options.

Opprinnelig skrevet av Calculus:

Bouncing shield, my beloved. This skill alone makes it worth keeping shield on my warrior right now.

So like right here when Bouncing Shield is apparently doing something vital for you, I guarantee a different build like a mage that picked up that spell would be serving you much better in the end. Bouncing Shield scales off the shield used, not your stats really, so it works just fine on a mage instead of a warrior, and a mage can do so much more damage because they don't rely on weapon attacks meaning that solo weapon situation doesn't hinder them at all. Necromages can maintain physical damage and still be a "mage" in this context.

Opprinnelig skrevet av Lasagna:

shields are good early game where the extra armour is enough to require an extra hit before your guys are able to be crowd controlled. I think people seriously under rated how good bouncing shield is as a ranged poke on your melee guy before you get 3 movement abilities on everyone.

Thing here is that the addition of a shield will typically always let you take that one extra hit basically all game long, that doesn't really change ever. As for needing 3 movement abilities on everyone... why so many? I find two to be more than sufficient and you can have that literally by level 4 if you build for it. Every build can use a dip in Scoundrel for Adrenaline and an extra point for Cloak and Dagger at 4 isn't bad. Its a little far stretched to also get 2 Huntsman on everyone that early to also get Tactical Retreat, but it can be done with gear if you get lucky. In the event that a build doesn't do both, The Pawn unlocks with a Scoundrel point and early game just one self teleport, access to The Pawn and a character with teleport gloves to reposition in emergencies, you really shouldn't need more mobility. So if lacking mobility is the only thing making Bouncing Shield good is your reasoning, I don't really get it.