• Bucklers,
  
• targes,
  
• heaters,
  
• kites,
  
• towers,
  
• pavise shields,
  
• rodella shields,
  
• the agents of shield television series.

No matter what type of shield you're looking at, it is obvious at first sight that this piece of equipment was concepted solely for the purpose of protection.

Almost always accompanied with a simple armament like a spear or an arming sword, the shield has long been a mainstay in the arsenals of history's most basic soldiers.

It is a cardinal instrument of defense that sends a very clear message:

Stay your ugly ass the fuсk over there and nobody gets hurt

I almost thought the game was lying to me about how irremediably hopeless this shield was.

Seldom ever does the game's own item description writer take the opportunity to full tilt slander a piece of equipment as clearly and as unshakably as this shield. This isn't an item description, this is a hit piece.

A creaky old wooden shield, circular in shape. Roughly reinforced with vines.

There are countless other shields available of better make. This piece of scrap isn't worth the effort of equipping.

When I hear a sentence like, roughly reinforced with vines or some such, I can almost hear the whooshing sound made by the writer's hand waving the shield away like Gordon ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Ramsay shooing someone out of his kitchen.

Why did you take this out? Was it too vulgar for your M-rated game or some ♥♥♥♥?

It is made as clear as day that you should be offended by this shield's very existence.

The only damage negation it has that doesn't get left behind by almost every other shield is lightning negation. You know, all those pestering unruly lightning enemies and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Limgrave.

It is consistently in the bottom five of all shields for any other purpose.

This description wasn't kidding.

There is no greater waste of your time than so much as looking at this shield.

Rolling around in a pit of rusty staples would be more productive.

Raises immunity by 40.
Fuсking whoopie.

The perfumer's shield is the kind of shield that's just really easy to hate.

The damage negations leave much to be desired, even for a smaller shield, and 16% lightning damage negation?

You might as well just not even have a shield at that point.

Most metallic shields are likely going to have piss lightning negation because that's how science works, but even the small metallic shields usually have higher than average fire and physical defense to offset that deficiency.

This shield has none of that.

Guard boost is trash, and I think the immunity increase is only there to make people feel like the shield is worth a second glance, to try and mislead you into thinking you've overlooked something about it and it's actually you that's the problem.

As unsightly as it is ineffective, the marred leather shield has the single worst physical negation of any medium shield and the third worst guard boost.

These are two of the three main reasons your build would ever include a shield in the first place.
The third and final reason being parrying, I guess.

So looking for any reason to go out of your way to farm and use this shield is already setting yourself up for misfortune, but that extra 50 bleed per hit is going to try its damnedest to convince you it's worth more than the sum of its damage absorption.

It's just another perfumer shield debacle.

Don't waste your time.

A pillory is defined as a wooden framework designed to punish criminals by publicly humiliating whoever was imprisoned inside it.

Sort of how people publicly humiliate themselves by trying to argue a decent case for this shield.

If you want to raise vitality, go and get your hands on the gravescythe and leave this thing alone.

I don't even think it wants to be a shield.

It's the heaviest small shield in the game at three and a half pounds and no extra strength scaling to make up for it.

It very obviously does not want to be picked up.

It even went out of its way to hide itself behind a fog gate that requires 2 stonesword keys.

Like, just leave it alone.

Wooden shields normally stick to the theme of above average lightning or magic negation at the expense of horrible fire and physical negation.

You can see this with multiple shields like


But all the defenses on the hawk crest wooden shield are just sort of, eh, they're kinda ♥♥♥♥.

It gets 32% fire negation and 44% for all other elemental damage types.

I guess 90% physical is somewhat decent for a surfboard, but this is a medium shield.

Half the entire subclass is heater shields of similar weight with 100% physical negation and a much higher guard boost.

This thing isn't a shield, it looks like some sort of family heirloom you would hang up on your kitchen wall.

Okay, we need to have a talk about how this game writes some of its descriptions.

A small wooden roundshield. It is light and easy to handle, but cannot offer the damage negation of a metal shield.

Its emblem is an ancient thorn desighn. Tough it isn't much, it boosts fire damage negation.

Enhanced fire damage negation gives the impression that a special effect ID activates upon equipping the shield.

When you see a line like raises immunity, it always does exactly what it says it does.

There's no ambiguity or smoke and mirrors involved with the delivery.

When you say an item has a specific enhanced negation, it's really misleading when I have to figure out by myself that, oh, the shield actually just has decent fire negation and it's still a wooden small shield, so it's a good few stretches of the imagination from what I'd call enhanced.

God, I want to like this shield so bad.

It probably has one of the most satisfying visual motifs of all the shields.

The fur decorating the circumference of the shield, the golden rivets that outline the polar star, whatever the ♥♥♥♥ that is, it's only mentioned like two or three times and no one gives a ♥♥♥♥ about it, and it matches perfectly with so many different armor sets.

The description honestly sounds like flavor text and you wouldn't be faulted for thinking it's just one of the writers trying to make something sound fancier than it is, but if you look in map studio, blocking frostbite attacks with this shield actually decreases the status build-up by 45%.

Wow, I'm impressed.

Given the track record these descriptions have for accuracy, I was honestly just expecting this param to be left with a ♥♥♥♥ and balls or something.

There's a sub-theme of crest shields in the medium category that seem to be nothing more than a sloppy arrangement of salt and pepper weapons that only exist in the world to give the game a wider scope of items so that the game can feel more immersive.

Every single shield that falls into the wooden crest sub-type also shares the theme of being almost completely dysfunctional.

It's got the stats of a small shield but weighs twice as much, if not more, can't even climb above 90% physical absorption and with no additional effects like raising a certain stat or resistance or anything, which is usually what you would expect with shields that are this lacking in the negation department.

Yellow flame, front and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ center, it even has lore tied to the ailing village that's afflicted by madness in-game.

So why doesn't this shield boost focus?

That would have been the perfect excuse to use this shi-

I mean, it still would have sucked ass through a straw, but at least it would have had a bit of personality to it.

At least it would have tried to earn a little respect.

No, just another crest shield that would have seen better use as someone's dartboard.

Although something I can't wrap my head around.

Horses are commonly used to represent a holy theme in the game, such as sentinels guarding the Erdtree, but the horse crest shield has 50% magic negation, while the flame crest shield has 50% holy negation.

Or should I just add this to the list of ♥♥♥♥?

Nobody cares, but never mind, I'm already doing it.

If you're looking for comparisons between this and the Black leather shield, you're not gonna find much.

The two most notable discrepancies are with physical negation and guard boost, and even then we're talking about like a 3% difference in physical negation and a guard boost gap of 4.

So who cares?

I'm putting this shield a couple spaces over the black leather variant for the sake of being objective, but I personally just stick with the former option if it's somehow serving you well enough.

This wooden shield is an interesting case because it doesn't seem to be congruent with the otherwise pretty on-the-nose theme of wooden shields excelling in certain types of damage negation.

The blue-white shield has 35% fire negation, which is normally something you wouldn't see on small wooden shields, but 22% lightning negation is honestly pretty hard to defend no matter what shield it's on.

The magic defense also surprised me a bit since it has the second highest in its type, but the only thing really accomplished by subverting the theme of wooden equals fire bad is that it's now just a regular well-rounded small shield with unimpressive stats across the board that still ends up with a particular deficiency anyway, even if it isn't fire.

I have no personal attachment to this shield and I have no reason to loathe its existence either, but we're getting to the point where the only thing I can really say about shields like this is just that the stats are unimpressive, even for their size.

I guess 24% lightning negation makes a little sense here because there's like metal rivets decorating the surface of the shield or whatever, so I guess there is a technical reason for the absorption deficit, but it actually has less fire negation than the blue-white shield, so the metal reinforcement doesn't even mean anything significant.

I thought there was supposed to be a theme here.

Fuсk you.



Write this paragraph for me in the comments.

There's nothing special about this.

I'm moving on.

I don't think I'm trailblazing a path to any scientific discoveries by saying wood is very ♥♥♥♥♥♥ at conducting electricity, but 50% lightning negation is surprisingly hard to come by on shields of this caliber.

Unfortunately, its guard boost is still one of the worst in the medium shield subclass and anything with a physical negation lower than 90% is just getting stuffed into the trash at this point.

We're officially approaching the mediocre section of the list, so there's going to be very little outside of unimpressive stats or arbitrary special effects that sound valuable but don't really contribute to anything.

On top of being the 97,000th person to make a joke about the visual design representing the consequences of eating too many protein bars, I'm also going to put on my scientist cap and tell you that metal usually doesn't do a good job defending against lightning.

I'm a broken record today, I guess.

The rift shield honestly has god-awful elemental defenses, sporting mid-30s across the board, save for the 18% lightning absorption, but 76% physical is about as good as you're going to get on a shield that only weighs two pounds.

It can also be purchased from a merchant for 1,800 runes, meaning you don't have to embarrass yourself wasting precious hours genociding a random animal species over a dinner plate.

A whole burger of nothing with a side order of non-being and complete and total nihility for dessert.

The dragon claw shield special.

Deals strike damage while offering extra bonus damage against enemies with a pierce weakness.

Great lightning negation, but significantly below average performance on every other account.

Offers no unique weapon skill while being one of only two great shields with split ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ scaling and having great lightning negation means there's only certain sections in the game where it's actually proficient enough to stand out.

I think I finally figured out the trick to how Elden Ring words its descriptions.

If whatever the description says is tied to a really high base stat, it'll usually phrase things in a way that emphasizes the item itself.

But if it's a special effect of some kind, they'll say that the item gives you something.

This shield doesn't raise fire negation, it just has really good fire absorption, which is just the game's way of saying that property is owned by the shield itself instead of a bonus that it gives to the player.

Really small detail, but it's pretty consistent across most of the game's wording.



Oh, yeah, the shield.

Yeah, the shield sucks.
Sorry.

Honestly, one of the more underrated picks on this list.

I'm never going to say it's good because it isn't, but I do think a lot of people overlook it.

One glance at the stats is more than enough to draw a very clear conclusion, but the passive resistances are a nice convenience, even if you're never really in danger of accumulating more than, like, two different ailments at the same time, leaving the passive bonuses feeling like they just spread a little too thin to ever be truly that efficient.

The buckler normally wouldn't be used for blocking, but defenses this abysmal honestly have no excuse.

I'm pretty sure you would block more damage holding your open hand in front of your face Resident Evil 7 style than you would with this shield.

The unique parry art is nice and comfortable, only if you're so used to using buckler parries in Souls games that you can't reflexively use anything else, but that's also ignoring there are other parry ashes in the game that come with around the same amount of active frames, give or take, that are flexible with even medium-sized shields, in addition to other benefits that usually come with said ashes, such as deflecting projectiles, or being able to parry at a slight distance.

When I call this a kitchen strainer in my videos, that's not supposed to be a funny joke.

That's the guide on how to use this item.

Having the highest holy damage negation of any medium shield is just not worth the sacrifices it makes to other categories.

56% doesn't sound as beneficial as it actually is, but 27% fire negation on what's supposed to be a metal shield is- it's-

I'm offended.
I am personally taken aback.

No matter what kind of damage you're blocking, there always seems to be another medium shield in close proximity that would be lighter or just easier to handle.

If you want to block lightning or magic damage, just get a wooden shield.

If you're blocking fire damage, get a metal one.

A theme the game never really strays that far from in most cases.

Finding ways to negate holy damage is not something you need to concern yourself with until you're literally at the gate of the final two bosses.

Or if you need help with Erdtree avatars, I guess.


The item- it's-
this is the only time this is ever mentioned in the whole game.

Shield of honor depicting a city crowned by the sun. It has seen better days.

Much like the wear upon the shield, the Seat of the Sun is long faded away.

Much to my surprise, the thorns decorating the surface of the shield actually aren't just for show.

This is one of the select few shields that come with a passive status effect buildup, and even if said buildup is adjacent to pricking your finger with an insulin syringe, it's still better than what I was expecting.

The elemental damage negation is slightly higher than most wooden shields in its subclass, with the exception of fire negation actually being lower than average at a meager 27%.

I'm sure you could use it for meme runs or something of the like, but if you ever find this in your inventory, there's probably a good reason you don't remember getting it.

It's very uncommon to see passive effects on shields that are actually worth paying attention to, let alone two of them on a single shield.

The shield bash, as a default, provides an offensive option for people who want to take advantage of its bleed buildup, and it's one of the coolest looking small shields in the game, honestly.

I'll respect it enough by not putting it with the rest of the dregs of society at the bottom of the ladder, because I can't in good faith say it's useless.

But as a shield, strictly speaking, the stats are inexcusable, and you'd find better options in the Layndell dumpsters, let alone in the rest of the game.

Sometimes I can understand why people get bent out of shape over whether or not a shield has 100% physical negation, and sometimes I don't.

93% negation is more than enough to barely notice the damage you're taking, and I don't think people should really care about whether or not its physical absorption is absolutely perfect.

But objectively speaking, this shield has much bigger problems than its negation stats.

Bleed buildup on something as slow as a Greatshield is questionable enough, but the fact that the shield doesn't have its own unique skill and isn't a somber weapon kinda convinces me they wanted to make a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ shield just to see how many people would justify it by saying it's only nine and a half pounds.

Just go with the Spiked Palisade.

It has a lower strength requirement anyways.

Plenty of Heater Shields exist, and due to their 100% physical negation and lighter weight, they're some of the most sought-after shields in the game.

However, this sort of mindset only provides a limited perspective of what actually makes a quality shield.

A guard boost of 60 on a fully upgraded medium shield toes the line of indefensible, and not a single elemental negation ever goes above 43%, which is kinda pitiful.

If you held up a moderately heavy frying pan in front of your face, it would probably offer the exact same damage absorption.

100% physical negation is the one single benefit this shield gives you, and when you can find that exact perk on over half the shields in the game, it's very easy to see why this particular Heater Shield is as overlooked as it is.

I know it's going to sound like I'm flip-flopping between whatever opinion I find is the most acceptable, but when I say this shield deserves 100% physical negation, please let me explain why I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mean it first.

Shields with underwhelming defenses usually have some sort of passive effect or bonus it also gives you as comeuppance, like the Jellyfish or Briar Greatshield.

Just because a shield isn't good at negating every single instance of damage doesn't mean it isn't worth considering.

If it wants to give me some bleed or madness resistance or something on the side, I think I can forgo a few points of defense.

However, if it gives you absolutely nothing else, it better be good at something, and The Lordsworn's shield is good at being accessible.

That is its one proficiency.

If you can't justify to me why a wooden frisbee weighs 4 pounds in-game, then I don't need to feel bad for giving this shield any higher than what it is right now.

I'm pretty surprised by the fact that it actually manages to have two different elemental negations that meet the 50% benchmark, but most of that benefit is taken away by its 47 guard boost.

You can barely block more than a few glint blades before getting your kneecaps shoved through your ass, and that's a problem when most magic damage from enemies comes in the form of barrages and hailstorms.

In the grand scheme, most of Elden Ring's shields are stacked very close together in terms of power, defense, utility, and overall showcase ability.

Almost as if approaching every combat encounter hiding behind a piece of tableware is inherently boring and not fun.

But this also consigns a lot of what's so rewarding to shields to a person's fashion sense.

Not a single one of you are going to like where I put the Carian Knight's Shield on this list, and I don't think anyone should care because it's still one of the snazziest shields in the game.

This is the only reason anyone uses The Smoldering Shield.

Its visual design is a damn near perfect match with Vike's Warspear, while offering higher than average physical negation, and I've run out of compliments to say before even completing the sentence.

14% lightning negation on what's basically a melted rock plate.

You can't change the ash, meaning you're stuck with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ shield bash on a shield whose size barely rivals actual tableware.

And if the only two comments I can find in forums are you can use this shield to reset frostbite and burnt cookie, then I think the internet has already ranked this shield for me.

A passive HP regen of 3 per second is not a big deal. Regen builds are only effective when fully committed to them.

Royal Remain set, Bestial Vitality with the Icon Shield and Blessed Dew talisman, and maybe you'll see a regen build pull some decent practical weight.

In terms of defense, the only elemental negation that really means anything on this shield is lightning, because it's the only negation that barely climbs above 50%.

It's 11 and a half pounds, which is still on the lighter side for a great shield, but it also can't be infused or altered with another Ash of War, 59 guard boost on a great shield is kind of pathetic, especially considering the diminishing returns given to shields of this type by the Great Shield Talisman, and the strength requirement is just barely inconvenient enough to push me away from it.

The Wooden Greatshield offers clear benefits and equally clear disadvantages.

The guard boost and general negation of all damage types measures up significantly worse than almost every other great shield, but it's extremely low weight and strength requirement makes for a perfect baby's first paladin build that just wants to have a great shield on their person.

There are some really good medium shield options with comparable stats, but some greatshield benefits aren't immediately obvious until you actually use one, such as light weapons and even some larger weapons like curved great swords being able to ricochet off of greatshields, making pokes and counterattacks very comfortable, and it's a full two pounds lighter than the Lord's Sworn Shield with a slightly lower strength requirement.

Extremely niche, which means it's going to have a damn hard time standing out in this list.

If you're having trouble with Rennala or Smarag for some reason, first I'd consider making sure you're looking at the screen right side up before going into build details, but if that doesn't work, then yes, I suppose you could use a different shield.

89% magic damage absorption is way too good for one specific kind of enemy, but the other defenses, and particularly its guard boost, are so inexcusably poor as a result that you would never consciously use it in any other situation.

It's also picked up extremely late into the game, all the way in the Consecrated Snowfields, clearly communicating to the player that this shield has exactly one single use, and that's stomping Loretta's Moon Pie helmet-looking ass into the dust and then promptly selling it or cramming it into your inventory and forgetting about it until New Game Plus.

Okay, so just stick with me on this one. I can't promise you'll like what I have to say because I barely liked typing it out, but it's time to put on my objective cap here for a second.

The damage negation isn't great across the board.

Its physical defense being especially scornworthy, and 60 guard boost on a plus 25 is narrowly acceptable. Thing is, this is a turtle shell, not technically a shield.

And the tremendous uptick in fashion points you get upon slapping this thing on your character's back I think should make it pretty obvious to anyone that this shield's job is not to actually be a shield.

Its job is to idle around like a second-grader's backpack while you enjoy two-handing your weapon of choice with an extra... an extra... three... three stamina regen.

Yeah, the talisman gives you eight, by the way, in case you're missing out on some perspective.

In all honesty, there's no reason to put these items in competition with one another since they all stack together anyways, but the weight, the physical absorption, everything else about it just isn't there.

I'm sorry, but I don't think three stamina regen is worth all of these massive stat cuts.

I had this shield at number 17 at one point because, yes, stamina regen really is that good, and I promise you're not a moron for liking it.

But if I'm shuffling back and forth between medium and heavy, like any quality build with a little bit of thought put into it will likely have to do at some point, I will always choose the 0.7 pound talisman over the cumbersome five and a half pound galactic land mass this game has the audacity to declare a shield.

Interesting that the Red Crest Heater Shield is proficient with magic negation, while the blue variant is better at defending against holy.

I'm fully convinced there's no thematic cohesion to these whatsoever, and they just spun a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ wheel or used a number generator app to decide the negations for half of these medium shields.

It's not like it really matters anyway, since all of them are practically equal in terms of defense, weight, and overall utility, but I suppose there are plenty of efficient ways to defend against magic damage already, which leaves the Red Crest Shield at the bottom of this specific pack.

And for the sake of keeping everything simple, I'm just going to place the Blue Crest right next to it.

Exact same guard boost, exact same weight, even the same total negation.

That's not a joke.

If you throw all the elemental absorptions into a calculator, the sum of both is 167 exactly.

For all intents and purposes, except one extremely niche proficiency, which is a 50% holy negation, this is the exact same shield with a different coat of paint.

The Eclipse Heater, unlike its bigger, more successful millionaire brother, doesn't really have anything outstanding going for it.

You'd think since this is the Eclipse Crest we're talking about, it would include some sort of passive bonus related to the player's vitality, or maybe just some innate frostbite resistance or something or other, but it doesn't really come with any of that.

It's just another cookie sheet with a fancy paint design.

Perfect if you're looking for a last-minute Christmas gift for your aunt or grandmother as a baking sheet or a wall ornament.

Not so perfect for blocking elemental damage.

Are you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-
Are you kidding me?

Put some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pierce damage on it if you're gonna write a description like this.

The crucible horn skewers foes when performing shield bashes.

Every single instance I run into something like this, my patience gets thinner and my sympathy continues to dwindle.

The Crucible Horn skewers foes, huh?

FromSoft, the only thing you're skewering right now is the expectations of your audience.

64% holy negation is pretty great, and the lighter weight prevents me from getting too mad at it, and great shields have an extra tier of toughness anyways that allow the deflecting of certain weaker attacks.

Like, it's honestly not that bad of a shield. I'm just really sick of being hoodwinked by a description writer who very obviously knows what they're writing.

A bit weird for such a popular shield that it doesn't have a single negation type over 50%, but being halfway through the list means we're slowly edging our way out of non-stick baking sheet territory and actually starting to find some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ shields.

51 guard boost on a +0 is the okayest guard boost in the game.

Absolutely no praise nor malice is worthy of being attached to this shield.

It's just as accessible as it is underwhelming, and it's as reliable as it is disappointing.

It's the perfect shield for people who only ever played the Knight class in Dark Souls 3, and it's sturdy enough to tank exactly one hit from anything you need it to.

It does its job, and then ♥♥♥♥♥ off.

In every video, I spend the most amount of time deciding what's going to be right in the middle of the list, because I think having the proper anchor point just helps a lot with organizing the rest.

But as far as shields are concerned, this was a pretty easy decision.

The Beast Crest Heater Shield on the surface bears the appearance of an ordinary heater shield. However, further inspection reveals that that's exactly what it ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is.

But it's incredibly light as far as medium shields fare.

The 50% magic negation works to its benefit because of how early into Limgrave you pick it up, setting up physical knight builds kinda comfortably for the next legacy area.

It can be buffed, it can be infused, it can be used as a fun little sled if you grease up the surface and ride it down a snowy slope.

The possibilities truly never end with this shield.

It's nothing substantial as far as defenses, but we are finally digging into some of the lighter medium shields that still give you 100% physical negation.

The extra damage negation when your HP dips below 20% is okay on paper, I guess?

But anyone who's played through the game once, I think is able to tell you pretty confidently why this never helps as much as people want to believe it does.

Okay, so it stacks with the branch sword talismans.
Fu- cool.
Fu- whatever.

Vike's Dragon Bolt technically stacks with the Winged Tear, that doesn't make it worth looking at.

If you're running a very specific build with very specific talismans, then yes, I suppose it can add quite a bit to your character's punching power.

But 10% is sorta negligible when I'm in Farum Azula and every source of damage, including most enemies, can hit for several hundreds of HP at a time.

Okay guys, I'm really sorry.

Truly, that was a genuinely heartfelt apology, leaving my mouth just now.

Because this shield is just not as capable as people think it is.

Don't get me wrong, it does its job well, but amidst the banished night shields and brass shields and the weird self-masturbatory corner of fingerprint users, the Carian Knight's shield crawls onto the stage and displays its talents with all the enthusiasm of a third-grade science fair project.

This shield is a yawn and a cough personified.

71% magic negation is only good because the Mirror Shield is locked behind a 16-hour journey to Mount Faraway as ♥♥♥♥, and aside from its decent holy negation, the other elemental negations are honestly just inexcusable.

They might as well have not even showed up to work today.

When all is considered, it's another shield that's primarily used in standard combat encounters due to its 100% physical absorption, only slightly prettier than the others.

It's really cute that all of the crest shields have a deeper meaning to them, how the Eclipse Crest symbolizes the slumbering of the demigods, the Blue Gold Shield represents the Erdtree, and the Inverted Hawk symbolizes the earthbound plunge of someone's career upon giving this shield a parry as a default ash.

This is not a joke, it's getting annoying.

Why do so many medium shields have this as a default?

Honestly though, this shield is one of the better in its class.

There's nothing substantially important regarding its negation and guard boosts that can set it apart from any other metal shield, but the Inverted Hawk Shield weighs a full pound less than most of its peers while offering the same negation you would see on a kite shield.

Three and a half pounds is the lower threshold in weight for medium shields, and it still gives you 100% physical negation.

So, not a lot to complain about.

The Jellyfish Shield has garnered a long-standing reputation as the Reddit Shield, or the shield for those who just like chasing big damage attacks.

Jellyfish Shield users are the type of people to install cookie clicker mods just because they want to see the big number go faster.

Of course it has its benefits, it's tied with Wooden Greatshield for lightest in its class, and its magic and fire negation are actually kinda decent.

It's honestly a shame this shield has found a subset of people whose entire modus operandi never advances past any stratagem that doesn't also involve RKR and a colossal weapon everyone on YouTube used for six months.

Or the Cuckoo Greatshield.

I'm gonna call it the Kaku Greatshield cause it sounds funnier.

Accessibility is the name of the game here, and the Cuckoo Shield is certainly that. It drops from every knight in Lyernia who's big enough to carry it.

Honestly, I've run into this shield so many times I could've found one of these in a bush somewhere and not even questioned the absurdity of it.

Why does this shield drop so much more frequently than any other?

I have no game data to support this. I just need one person to agree with me so I can stop feeling like From infiltrated my system and is running psychological experiments on me.

Visually, it's got that iconic sleekness to it, and the magic damage negation is certainly helpful, but as long as there's a mausoleum knight patrolling the front door of Blackknife Catacombs, this shield is always going to be the second choice.

It's a metal shield with a ♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ ton of magic negation.

That's really the only thing special about it. 66% negation against anything on a medium shield is a true blessing, and it's not something you should ever take for granted.

The guard boost is decent enough, and with a good talisman and maybe a spell or two, the magic absorption can easily climb up to mirror shield heights while having overall better guard boost and noticeably better damage absorption across the board.

Of course, that takes some actual setup and game, so I feel as though saying it's only good with these talismans and this affinity on this day of the week is kind of an unfair comparison.

If you're looking specifically for magic absorption, the mirror shield is hard to beat.

But the albinoric shield has the added flexibility of changing affinities and ashes, and its other absorptions don't suffer to such a discomforting degree.

This shield does two things, and I'm not sure if I respect this shield more or less for either reason.

Firstly, if you require 24 Strength as the very first great shield in the game, or any shield for that matter, I am going to laugh.

I am going to laugh at you, and I'm going to ignore whatever you just threw at me.

Secondly, it's an unnecessarily rough introduction to the fact that stat requirements on shields actually matter in this game.

If you don't have the stats, great shields give you a percentage of the guard boost they normally do, in addition to not giving you its signature benefit of standard attacks bouncing off of it.

So the fact that this shield actually ends up being serviceable in both the guard boost and defense departments, while managing to weigh slightly less than the average great shield, I think just means it got off really lucky because I was in a good ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mood.

If you spit in my mouth at the beginning of the game and for some reason I do a double take and decide you might be worth it later on, then let's be honest, this thing could have been a whole lot worse.

I don't even have to figure out a way to put my opinions into words with this shield, because the item description just does it for me.

Heavier than a wooden shield, but with higher damage negation.

There you go.

Also, it's gold, so I guess that means higher holy defense.

And yet another instance of the game thinking slightly higher negation on a specific element is just so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ strong that it's important enough to mention, as though we couldn't have already gleaned that from the color of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ shield.

It is one of the only small shields with over 50% negation in any category.

And I guess the fact that it's one proficiency is holy negation gives it enough of a reason to at least consider it in the endgame.

So, it's fine, I guess.

I don't have any opinions on this.

In addition to tower shields being slightly heavier and less efficient at blocking damage than the knight's great shields, in, well, in some cases, they also come with a useful bit of knowledge in the description, making it one of the only places in the game where you're actually told great shields are better at repelling attacks.

So that's one point for the tower shields, I guess.

They do also come equipped with the shield bash skill as a default, unlike the knight shields, which can provide more offensive options in case poking ♥♥♥♥ from behind an oversized baking tray wasn't cringe enough.

Go fix yourself some pizza rolls on that thing or something instead of wasting the precious resource of bandwidth on one of 650 YouTuber builds we've all seen before.

All tower shields are created equally, but looking at the weight, attack power, and overall negation, it's more efficient for this video for me to just act like the slight discrepancies here and there actually matter.

Three more guard boost at +25 than the inverted hawk is not something you're going to notice or care about in the moment.

Like, it's just not.

The lightning and holy negation comes up slightly shorter than the inverted hawk, but only in the sense that, oh ♥♥♥♥, we accidentally made four of these things for some reason, so let's just give them all slightly different stats and put them on soldiers with slightly different armor.

So if you're concerned with min-maxing, then yes, this specific tower shield is your go-to for fire and magic negation.

But if you're concerned with something a normal person is, you probably don't care about the little differences between any shield in this category and just see a giant sheet of metal with 100% physical defense and think, yep, that'll work.

You know what?
See above.
I'm tired.

I can't keep turning out paragraphs for what's functionally the exact same shield with the exact same power and close to the exact same total negation.

You like slapping ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with the tailgate of an F-150 or you're one of those cringe lords that mained the riot shield in MW2?

Well, here you go.

You'll like the tower shields.

I'm moving on.

The lightest of the knight-themed greatshields and probably the coolest looking.

It's the only asymmetrically-designed greatshield in this particular theme and unless I can think of any by the time I finish this sentence, the only asymmetrically-designed greatshield in the whole game.

Nope, still can't think of one.

I'd guess if you count the Erdtree greatshield with that little divot on the side, but no shield wears an intentionally lopsided visual theme as proudly and loudly as the Redmane Greatshield.

Being the lightest also means it's the weakest if you total up all the negations at once, but 70% fire negation is honestly nothing to scoff at.

The English language is finite and limited and I can only word a sentence differently so many times until I finally just get tired of trying and say fire is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ everywhere in this game.

• Fire arrows,
  
• fire pots,
  
• volcanoes,
  
• volcano pots,
  
• dragons that breathe fire,
  
• machines that breathe fire,
  
• torches,
  
• blood flame,
  
• black flame.

Getting hit with fire is as inevitable as the sun coming up tomorrow, which also technically counts as an attack since you didn't consent to being brought into this miserable existence.

This means there's never a time where the Redmane Greatshield isn't at least good at blocking something.

I'm putting the Iron Roundshield this high up on my list because I respect it.

Not because you'd probably be better off just taking the extra pound or two on the chin and going for a medium shield with 100% physical negation, but because the detailing on this shield is snazzy as ♥♥♥♥.

80% physical negation is still god-tier on a small shield, and it doesn't require any maintenance after you pick it up to be good at what it does.

Even with its insanely good physical negation, it still has a reliable parry window due to it being a small shield. It comes without an ash by default, making it flexible with whatever your main weapon is, and unless you're just trying really hard to make parries work for a fun playthrough, I consider the no-skill ash being the optimal state of being for an ordinary, non-somber shield such as this one.

I'd call it a hidden gem, but everyone already knows this shield is good.

Just keep it away from thunderstorms and you've got yourself a surprisingly capable saucepan.

When looking at the negation totals by themselves, ignoring this shield outright becomes very easy to do.

So easy that it almost happens by accident.

You finish off the two sentinels guarding the outer wall, pick up the shield, and see a cascade of red numbers popping up in the comparison tab and think, nah, ♥♥♥♥ that.

I can find a better one.

And that's just the end of it.

That is the last time you ever think about this shield, and whether or not that's a good decision is something I still struggle with.

No matter how many bells and whistles come attached with your limited edition 2019 Chevrolet car door, it almost never overrides the single most important function of a greatshield, which is to sit on your ass while the enemy gives themselves a heart condition trying to get through your immaculate defense.

However, there is one major but involving the Erdtree Greatshield, which is that this is the only greatshield in the entire game that comes with a parry function.

It's not a traditional parry.

Only parries.
Projectiles, but...
I mean, that counts for something.

This kite shield just does a little bit of everything.

It has its finger dipped slightly in every single damage negation pie, except lightning, because metal shields still suck against lightning.

I'm also really digging the theme of a scorpion here, which is supposed to be a warning of surprise attacks and sudden strikes, or so says the description.

And the higher than average guard boost makes it the perfect medium shield for counterattacking.

Well, I guess one of the perfect ones.

Even though it's not the most perfect, but don't worry, we're getting to those here in a bit.

I'm just really glad one of my favorite action films of all time is finally getting some recognition in the Souls crowd.

Even if it is 13 years too late to properly appreciate the reference, I'm still willing to give this shield some brownie points for an attempt.

Okay, so those last couple sentences I said were obviously a bit, but if you ever called the Prosthesis talisman a Sekiro reference, I just want to make sure you know this is exactly how stupid you sound.

This shield is way too ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good for it to be a small shield.

Boosting any stat resistance by 40 is a bit on the laughable side, but robustness is the only resistance that can actually get away with being boosted by such a negligible amount and still end up doing something.

Robustness, in case you haven't visited a wiki in a few weeks, determines your bleed and frostbite resistance.

Firstly, this effect is a passive buff, meaning you don't even need the shield in your hand to benefit from it. You can two-hand whatever bonking stick you want, and as long as the shield is on your person somewhere, the effect still counts.

Secondly, and probably most important, have you seen the negation numbers on this?

I mean, yeah, the lightning absorption isn't worth a double-fisted ♥♥♥♥, but how is that different from literally any other shield on this list except Dragonclaw?

And ♥♥♥♥ Dragonclaw.

Dragonclaw sucks.

100% physical absorption, but no outstanding special effects or bonuses, and the elemental defense is kind of average for a greatshield.

It has a weight similar to heavier knight greatshields like the Golden and Gilded shields, but its total absorption falls closer to the Tower Shield family.

Really challenging my brain to come up with a good reason why I'm lugging around 17 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pounds when I could just grab a cooler-looking greatshield of similar quality off one of the hundreds of knights I've left in my wake.

You're buying this from the merchant in the outer wall of Laindell, so you're not exactly far away from such quality.

Go invade the capital and pick yourself up one of those giant golden ovals the real knights use.

The description straight up calls you a ♥♥♥♥♥ and a coward, and you have the freedom not to take it lying down.

Another case of something I've been calling beer belly privilege, where the heavier something is, the more effective it is at doing its job.

I'm pretty sure that concept already has an actual name somewhere in like a game design dictionary or something, but I like my name because I think it's funny.

The Dragon Towershield is a pound and a half more burdensome, and as comeuppance has been given slightly better combined absorption and guard boost than the other Towershields.

This is a bit of a big deal because heavier weapons and shields usually require a more demanding stat requirement.

Not so with this animal.

It keeps the strength benchmark at a comfortable and familiar 30, the same as all the other Towershields.

But with 69 guard boost on a +0, four more base damage, and the overall absorption is just slightly better than everyone else in the Towershield family tree.

This is why I procrastinated ranking shields for so long.

It's because most shields in any of the three subclasses function identically to one another.

Hold it in front of you and take less damage.

That's how a shield works.

Or at least that's how a shield is supposed to work.

But all you need to do is borderlands the ♥♥♥♥ out of the front of one of them, and suddenly they become better than half the actual weapons in the game.

And unless you're ranking shields specifically by themselves, that just makes for a very awkwardly paced tier list. I mean, it still kind of does.

No matter how you rank these, there are going to be some outliers that are obviously supposed to be used for a more offensive purpose.

So now you have to debate with yourself about how much power it has and whether or not that's worth the absorption deficits, and you end up with this dumb ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ math equation in your head that doesn't represent anything, except the amount of time you wasted on something literally no one else is going to look that deep into.

So ♥♥♥♥ it.
Palisade is number 14.

And if you have a problem with it, a half-hearted apology is the best you're ever going to get from me.

Yep, more, more outliers.

They're ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, here they are.

You ever see an item or a weapon with so many different positives and negatives that you end up becoming lost in your imaginary T-chart and finally decide to just ignore whatever it was you picked up? I think that's what happened to a lot of people here.

20 and a half pounds is pretty, pretty hard to defend.

I'm not going to excuse that.

If you were to pick this up at any given time, you would almost certainly have at least three great shields somewhere in your bottomless backpack with better overall stats.

However, this shield comes with a colossal butt. And for once, I'm not talking about the wank chief holding it.

Flamespit on a fully upgraded shield can easily climb up to 17 to 1800 damage without even needing to invest any talismans or crystal tears into it.

It is on all accounts, a better and more consistent canon of HEMA with 10 less FP.

This makes it a remarkably independent great shield that's proficient in both blocking and dealing damage, more so than probably any other shield.

I kind of understand it's hefty weight now because you honestly don't even need a main hand weapon with a shield like this.

I am so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sick of people sleeping on this shield just because it looks like a 20 year old art student's first go at blender.

I'd like to introduce you to an acquaintance of mine named Law of Causality.

He has some self-esteem issues.

He gets bullied from time to time, mostly because he deserves it.

But every now and then, a specific talent of his will shine through and make me forget why I hate him for a few seconds.

Law of Causality triggers upon taking damage, meaning that 95% physical absorption is the best protection you're gonna get while not completely nullifying the effects of the incantation.

You also have some of the highest absorptions on a medium shield for all except magic, which just so happens to be the easiest type of absorption to give your character because scholar shield exists.

This shield is here to prove a point.

Not every shield has to retain 100% physical negation to be called exemplary.

In fact, if a shield ever does have that benefit, you can almost always count on it not giving you anything else.

If you're struggling to meet the enormously high strength benchmark of 16 for some reason, you can give this shield a test drive before inevitably gravitating towards the brass shield like every other medium shield user does.

If we're factoring weight and strength into it, I guess you could make an argument about this shield technically being more efficient in terms of guard boost, but I've been underlining for the past 35 minutes that not everything about a shield has to do with how well things bounce off of it.

Sometimes a piece of equipment doesn't need any passive effects or extenuating circumstances to make it a good pickup.

Sometimes a shield is good just because it does its ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ job.

It's a giant metal snow sled with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ circle on it, that's all it is.

No hidden political agendas, no passive buffs that give you 3% resistance to having your nuts run over by a dirt bike on Sundays or something equally unproductive, but it has better magic negation than the Kaku variant with 76 guard boost at plus zero, and its other defenses don't get shafted because of it.

Not everything needs to be extravagantly overpowered or give you 5% bonus damage against enemies wearing boxer briefs or something.

If a shield has good stats, sometimes that's all it needs.

Oh, wait, except there is a special effect, you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ toothbrush chewer.

Raises all your resistance by 50, except death blight, the one resistance you think it would actually boost, going by the description.

When I say the phrase tier 3 hardness, the fact that most great-sized weapons and regular hammers can be deflected using this shield probably isn't the first thing you think of.

If anything, you probably chuckled to yourself and thought, yeah, just like my ♥♥♥♥, before an imaginary laugh track played in your head because of how funny you are.

Tier 3 is quite a significant step up from the normal tier 2 that great shields have as a default.

At this point, the only weapons you really need to worry about are the Colossals.

It also manages to give you two different effects, one being pretty decent poison buildup, and the other being a boost to your player's immunity by 60, which actually helps in quite a lot of situations.

The guard boost is not the best.

It just barely climbs out of the bottom half of its class, so satisfactory is probably the best you're ever gonna get if you're looking for straight-up damage absorption.

I don't know where to put this.

Like, I honestly don't.

Should it be 8?
Should it be 1?
Or maybe even 36?

Is this even a shield?
Who the ♥♥♥♥ uses this as a shield?

This one item throws the entire criteria model for this list in the paper shredder, and it's just a snake taking a nap on a piece of wood.

The negation and guard stats are buried so deep below any other option that calling it a negative outlier would be honoring its efforts.

This is not a shield.

It's a snake, okay?

It's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ venomous copperhead wrapped around your arm, Forspoken style.

I mean, it's good.

It certainly kills ♥♥♥♥ faster than pretty much other shields, so I can't say it's bad on any account, but this is a weapon.

Like, this is why it's so hard to rank shields.

As good a shield as it is a reliable friend, the damage negation and guard boost is wonderful, one of the greatest in its weight category, which is doubly impressive considering it's more dense than the average Great Spear user, and easy access to Godric Knight enemies in Limgrave makes this shield a pretty ubiquitous pickup.

Ashes like Barricade were practically made for shields like this, but the 115 base damage makes offensive ashes like Shield Bash an unexpectedly good choice.

The strength benchmark of 36 is a little gratuitous for a shield you can potentially find a single-digit amount of minutes into the game, but that's really the only bad thing I can say about it.

Let it collect dust in your inventory for a few hours with your 27 partisans you also farmed.

Of all the legacy dungeon-themed shields, the Hailigtree Greatshield handily takes the competition.

Not only does it have a clear elemental focus without ruining how it handles other damage types, but if 79% holy negation is something you just ignore, then I'm sorry, but you deserve to be stomped by the final boss.

It is worth noting that the Hailigtree shield is also the heaviest of the legacy-themed Greatshields, at 18,5 pounds, which isn't awful for a Greatshield, it's not what I'd call spectacular.

There are certainly lighter and more flexible options, but this is one of the select few shields the game ever offers you that, when fully upgraded, enables a linebacker-esque playstyle where you can just hold down a button and walk forward to victory, and that's doubly true with the Greatshield talisman.

I know it's been popular for a while to point out the diminishing returns upon using this talisman alongside actual Greatshields, but like, it's still good.

Like, if you have a free talisman slot, you should absolutely be using it.

That's a 20% stamina damage reduction you're missing out on.

You are in a guarded state when using the unique skill, and since your stamina is being depleted by both your attacks and the enemy's attacks hitting you, there is a bit of a learning curve to its performance.

There's also something incredibly funny about this shield, and I don't mean the absurd weight or the funny giant dad face on the front of the-

Tongues of Fire, like most other shield-specific unique skills, is a remarkably strong attack that gets completely overlooked simply because of the type of weapon it was placed on.

But the unique skill, obviously dealing fire damage, kind of makes its high fire negation extremely counterproductive.

This shield is tied with the Fingerprint Shield for best overall fire absorption in the game, and that chunky 81% fire absorption is going to be put to best use against godskins, man-serpents, or fire monks.

All of those enemies have incredibly high fire damage absorption, relegating the unique skill's damage to paper-cut tier should you decide to use it.

I don't know, I'm just nitpicking.

I don't think anyone else cares about this.

I think it's impossible to not be carrying like 10 of these on your way out of Stormvale.

It has the commonality of the Gilded Greatshield, with how frequent the enemies appear in so many stages of the game's progression.

Psychology dictates this is the single most effective way to condition people into thinking something sucks, overwhelm them with sheer abundance of the product.

But I'm actually proud of us for knowing how numbers work and being able to fight this reflex, because this shield, I'm pretty sure, has been a fan favorite since the day the game launched.

For two reasons.

1. it is impossible to not physically objectify the looks of this shield.
   
2. it's damage absorption and guard boost do not slack.

Usually in these kinds of games, style and deficiency are almost always mutually exclusive, for whatever reason.

And this is probably the only medium shield that gives you both.

If there was a single lore-accurate representation for everything the Golden Order stood for, this exact shield would be it.

This greatshield, pound for pound, stat for stat, is the single most efficient shield in the game.

As far as greatshields in the Knight family tree, the only other option it really contends with is the Haligtree Shield, which is one and a half pounds heavier with comparable stats. It's a representation of perfect symmetry, both mechanically and visually.

And I can't keep making jokes about all the greatshields looking like oversized dinner plates, but Jesus ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Christ, man.

I'm pretty sure I could go to my kitchen right now and just find a smaller version of this exact object.

Back in the days of old, when the game was still in its primordial soup phase, quest lines couldn't be completed and the guy in charge of arcane scaling didn't feel like getting out of bed, it was actually possible to reach 100 guard boost with the right buffs on certain greatshields.

Obviously, this got patched out because the fingerprint supremacy cult started getting a little too popular, but even then, it's still objectively the best shield if you can handle its massive weight.

And that's an if bigger than the shield itself, because this chubby chunkster weighs 29 pounds.

This is the single reason why I cannot in good conscience justify giving this shield first place.

The second heaviest shield in the entire game, is the Visage Shield at 24,
and the One-Eyed Shield as third heaviest at 20 and a half.

That is an 8,5 pound gap between three shields.

29 pounds does not come with the flexibility of other greatshields, where if you straddle the line carefully enough, you can still get away with medium rolling with a paled tree or a gilded shield.

But if you have fingerprint anywhere on your person, you are fully committed to one single playstyle.

There's no negotiations.

I'm not sure if this will be a controversial choice or not, because I genuinely think this is the greatest shield in the game, but I feel like placing the fingerprint shield in second gives people a really easy avenue down the he-just-wants-his-list-to-be-different neighborhood.

And if I wanted to prove that I was better than you, I have plenty of other ways to do so.

The Brass Shield is the proud owner of the highest guard boost of any medium shield, and can manage over 50% negation against three different elements, which is something even lighter greatshields have trouble accomplishing.

I can understand the weight being a little ridiculous for a medium shield, but this thing has stats that could honestly be considered a weak or great shield.

It's not only the best medium shield in the game objectively, but the sheer quantity of enemies you can farm it from is enough to make you think it's growing in fields or some ♥♥♥♥.

This isn't just a common drop.

We are dealing with a unique level of abundance that borders on species dominance.

I think beating the game as a knight build without picking up a single Brass Shield could actually be an interesting challenge run.

That's not a joke.

It is seriously impressive how inescapable this shield is.

Every day, the Brass Shield population grows rapidly without anything to keep it in check, and I fear that one day our ways of life might be at stake due to sheer ecosystem imbalance.

• Ranking All 16 Elden Ring Daggers From Worst to Best
  
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• Ranking All 115 Elden Ring Consumables From Worst to Best...
  
• Ranking All 308 Elden Ring Weapons From Worst to Best
  
  
• Oh God, Now He's Ranking The Elden Ring Great Runes...

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