I have a few questions about carrying a shield...

[Val Van Wolf]

I'm down to one account (18 years old now) from a high of seven. I want to have 2 spellcasting characters, 4 warrior characters with 4 different weapon types, and one crafter. I want the spellcasters to carry shields for the extra mods, and I want one of the warriors to have 120 parrying AND carry a shield. So it won't be my bushido swordswoman, my gargoyle thrower, or my abc archer with necro tendencies.
So my real question is should my fourth warrior have fencing or mace fighting and also parrying with a shield. I would like a suggestion for a good template for this character... which has the best selection of weapons available, fencing or mace fighting.... I just bought a mystic token so I can move some skills around with my soulstone frags which I also just purchased.... And also I want to make sure that carrying a shield is helpful to spellcasters.
I tried to quit UO forever a week or 2 ago but couldn't stand it....Thanks for any suggestions. Try to be friendly if you can... most of the templates I do use have been written up on Stratics by people like Lord God (he does exist!!!), and I really appreciate helpful ideas. Thanks in advance....
Happy holidays everyone, happy lives and lots of fun!

 

[BeaIank]

I'd go with a macer, since it has one handed weapons with AI and DS.
I run the following template with swords, and it is pretty solid:

120 swords, 120 tactics, 110 anatomy (120 with the turn in taly with +10 anatomy), 120 chiv, 120 parry, 120 healing, 10 magery (I swap to jewels with high LRC and +15 magery to cast protection so my chiv spells don't fizzle)

You can easily go with macing with it. Get yourself a nice legendary shield 10 SSI loaded with mods to help too.

Another template I like to do involves carrying a shield while having 120 bushido and 60 parry to reach the 300 skill points for mana reduction. This template has the advantage that you will never parry anything, so your legendary brittle shield with absurd mods will last forever.

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

I'm down to one account (18 years old now) from a high of seven. I want to have 2 spellcasting characters, 4 warrior characters with 4 different weapon types, and one crafter. I want the spellcasters to carry shields for the extra mods, and I want one of the warriors to have 120 parrying AND carry a shield. So it won't be my bushido swordswoman, my gargoyle thrower, or my abc archer with necro tendencies.
So my real question is should my fourth warrior have fencing or mace fighting and also parrying with a shield. I would like a suggestion for a good template for this character... which has the best selection of weapons available, fencing or mace fighting.... I just bought a mystic token so I can move some skills around with my soulstone frags which I also just purchased.... And also I want to make sure that carrying a shield is helpful to spellcasters.
I tried to quit UO forever a week or 2 ago but couldn't stand it....Thanks for any suggestions. Try to be friendly if you can... most of the templates I do use have been written up on Stratics by people like Lord God (he does exist!!!), and I really appreciate helpful ideas. Thanks in advance....
Happy holidays everyone, happy lives and lots of fun!

With the exception of a Parry/caster for PvP (which is an extremely good use) I really don't see much benefit to it. The devs bought most of the weapons speed and base damage in line with each other so aside from specials there's not really much difference between the dexxer classes. I would find it bothered me to have 3+ characters using the same artifacts and gear just for having one of each weapon class when I could just have one character and stone the weapon skill, but even then it'd be annoying to me to have sets of weapons for Fencing/Mace/Swords/Throwing and Archery. Despite that I was very tempted when I came back to use shields but still haven't and there's probably a good reason for it.

But that's just me, on what you've actually asked;

RE: Spellcasters with shields.
I'm assuming this is PvM. There's no SDI cap, so for me that is priority #1, it basically comes down to Necro/Mage or Mystic/Mage. On a Necro there's no real benefit to using a shield as you'll absorb Mana from Wraith Form. A shield can offer Soul Charge some LMC and some MR but essentially you don't need it to cap out, and if you don't need it, and could be 1h and use pots (which being on foot in Wraith is a good idea to have) then why have it. The other option is Mystics which are generally in Stone Form, unless they're a gargoyle in which case they may be flying and dropping Colossus, again no real benefit to using a shield that I can see. In Stone Form you'd be reducing incoming damage so things like Soul Charge would be even less useful.

RE: Mace or Fencing.
I really don't see much point in having a separate character for either. Swords has the best selection, at most with dexxers (aside from PvP/PvM versions) I have one ranged and one melee. I 1000% would not waste a Mythic Token on a warrior that can be built in less than a day.

Most of the above isn't very helpful, I think in general the problem for me is that a shield isn't adding anything I wasn't capping 4+ year ago, but it is lowering the base damage and better defence from using a 2h weapon. I would think about what it is you're actually realistically going to do with the character. Where you're going to take them. There's not many players that get on farm keys and solo an encounter for hours anymore due to the rubbish drop rates of everything and semi-forced group activities.

The most useful thing I can say is probably if you're convinced you want shields on characters I'd go with the templates being run by Tuan & Bealank that aren't Necros they sound like they've had good results with Paladin variants.

 

[CorwinXX]

Well, I have posted here a lot of my chars... with their minuses and pluses
If you want to have 4 warriors...
1. Classic archer
2. Bushido paladin (swordsman)
3. wraith thrower
4. mace paladin with shield... but without parrying (just because you need bushido to do good damage even when you have not proper slayer

 

[NuSair]

I carry a shield to use on my warriors that use bushido--- I really only take it off when fighting boss monsters or creatures that hit enough for me to care about the damage.

 

[Tabin]

Been playing this game for 3 months and I started off with a shield paladin but eventually made a 2h axe-sampire. Simple reason was that bushido is almost a must for certain boss encounters. I still use my shield paladin but mostly for things that require good defense or things with corrupted aura (but only if it has slayer vunerability). It's also a good team player because you can x-heal to tank certain things.

Fencing or Macing?
Fencing mastery that drops stamina is pretty darn good. It drops stamina pretty quickly. Fencing 1-h weapons look awful. There isn't a good high dmg 1-h with AI or DS.
Macing stagger mastery is sweet. Slowing down attacks by 60% for 10 seconds is pretty sweet. Also mace weapons already damage stamina as well. Macing also has better 1h options. AI = pick axe or DS = maul.
Between the two, definitely go with mace fighting.

Carrying a shield is great for paladins. You need it if you're running parry. You can get stats like HCI, DCI, DI, or SSI. Having the shield slot makes it easier to max out everything, although with modern artifacts, its not that hard to max out everything anyways especially if you're refining your armor to reduce DCI. In the end, the reason why most people don't use shields is because 1) bushido is often a must for non-slayer vunerability bosses 2) 2-h have better DPS 3) 2-h have higher imbuing mods 600 vs 500 and 4) it is possible to nearly max out all relevant combat stats without a shield.

Here's my build:
120 Mace, 105 Chiv + 15 ring, 110 + 10 Tactics, 100 Anatomy, 99 Necro, 100 Parry, 81+ healing
Vampiric Embrace isn't needed with HLL weapons but I like it because VE resists poison which means my bandaids will heal me instead of curing poison.