I'm back for DM/Shield. But some quick Q's...

Hey all,

I came back from a fairly lengthy hiatus and created a few new toons on Freedom. Namely Srixxon my scrapper. He's been a ton of fun, but I'm not sure I'm understanding Shields too well.

Firstly, it seems strange to me that it appears to be largely defense based. I was under the impression it would be a resistance set thanks to an object between your body and incoming damage.... to me it would seem the damage would negate portions of damage, but I guess they did it this way to make it unique? The reason I bring this up is I'm starting to see shields as a 'jack of all trades' / 'master of none' kind of secondary. Would you agree with this?

Anyway Dark Melee is an old friend of mine, and I feel comfortable with the build from that stand point. It's fun, and has some utility and fits my character's style, but here's what I'm wondering about Shields:

1- Why do so few people seem to slot TRUE GRIT with health? I am only level 26 but seeing some nice survivability bonuses from greater hitpoints. Am I missing something?

2- DEFLECTION: To me this seems to benefit defense/resistance equally. I see very few people slot it for resistance, why is that? Personally I have taken TOUGH early, and slotted DEFLECTION 6 times with a combo of end rdx/Def/Res. Is this a bad idea?

3- PHALANX FIGHTING and GRANT COVER: Are these powers in anyway useful as a solo player?

4- This might be a little vague but can a Shield Defense scrapper take on AV'S? (without uber slotting?).

5- With Shield Defense, is TOUGH mandatory for late game survival?

Thanks for reading. That's it for my questions for now. Like I said, I'm enjoying coming back to the game, and have been slowly leveling this toon and grabbing all the mission arch badges I can... he's been a blast, but felt a tad... glass like at time... he almost reminds me of Regen but again, right now he's only 26.

Thanks.

Thanks for the answers Santorican.

I'm thoroughly enjoying the shields. I am getting a little tired of DM though... in the last years I have made probably too many DM characters, but I couldn't think of anything that seemed to fit as well with shield.

And yes, I did use searchy. Thanks for the advice. I'm about to respec at 27... but I might build a blaster next.... We'll see. Shield is a lot of fun though.

yea I'm really enjoying this character so far. I'm taking my time, getting most of the badges, etc. He's 27 and seems very flexible, but he does suffer from some massive health hits if a halfway decent NPC gets a few successive shots in....

I think he'll need tough. I don't want to get it, but even at level 27 if a 'red' Hewer boss gets two shots in, I go down to about 1/3 health. I think shields relies on the defense a lot....

I'm also considering dropping CJ because I never got super jump and just enjoy ninja run. It's really nice not having to dump powers on traveling.

You're going to want to take Tough, Weave, and Combat Jumping to help boost your defense. Shield relies mainly on defense as its primary source of damage mitigation so you'll want as much as possible to help keep you a live.

I would definitely take Tough simply because Weave is *very* good in the late game for survival putting you that much closer to softcapping your positional defences. Phalanx Fighting is great for this aswell, but I often find my builds too tight for Grant Cover though. It's worth noting that is has good defence debuff resistance in it though

DM also pairs very well with Shields as it has -tohit which naturally stacks well with defence-based sets. You'll have a very powerful toon in the later levels with the right IOs, and even with SOs.