Hello fellow GrimDawners.
I have tried a lot of builds and I haven’t found any way yet to do some nice damage when using 1h+shield. In the end, I end up switching to either Dual Wield or 2H. I know 1h+shield builds should be focused on blocking/parrying rather than raw damage but I want to hear your opinions about it.
I have a Witchblade Tank, that uses Sigil of Consumption and the Blighted Rift Scourge, which works quite well.
And I think a shield build would generally benefit of point-blank AoE skills.
there’s definitively room for a good damage input with melee shield builds, boosting flat damage, OA, or resist reduction, but ofc it depends on what class you use 
Are you joking? Or, maybe you didnt updated to 1.0.0.5?
Cause you know, physical-focused 1h+shield Witchblade deals the highest physical DPS among all builds, while having close to highest tankiness as well.
Shield Training and Menhir’s Bulwark have insane flat (physical) damage scaling if you can pump them up into their ultimate levels.
Ok. So far, I am a pure Demolitionist. I have achieved a somewhat good damage by stacking several activable skills (lots of fire damage). I am level 20 right now. I think I will start investing in the soldier tree soon.
Somebody mentioned using Fevered Rage from Occultist to lower enemy DA, leveraging your shield defences to protect from the enraged.
You can do something like CoF -> Pox -> Blitz -> Blade Arc/Cadence and it should work pretty well.
Are there any weapon procs that utilize shield damage like the titan quest Defender passives?
Shield have %main hand damage procs on getting hit
Very few skills use shield damage, forcewave, blitz and active on one legendary shield. There may be more i’m not sure
Shield Slam from Battered Shell, Brutal Shield Slam from Serrated Shell.
I have three ideas.
Commando. I tested it and worked in both SC and HC. Damage comes from Demolitionist fire spells and fire devotions and occasional big blitz/cadence hit that applies DoT. Demo spells are BWC and mines and they gain no/little benefit from caster off-hand or weapons, so shield is obvious choice.
Soldier + whatever using cadence. Cadence last modifier adds a lot of flat damage to all your attacks. Theorycrafting a bit, I think Cadence works best with fast melee 1h + shield / caster off-hand, since Cadence 3rd hit ignore offhand weapon when dual wielding, and 2 handers are slow so +flat damage bonus is used less.
Soldier + whatever using Blitz. Blitz is strong with shield. It’s actually two separate, big hits dealt at the same time (one from weapon, one from shield, you can see two numbers popping up in 1h + shield configuration). Add cadence last modifier into it (see #2) and you can end up with powerful nuke and powerful sustained damage at the same time.
That’s a little surprising/meh. I wonder why, the shield WPS were fun in TQ.
TQ had a whole mastery devoted to defense and that mastery has some sweet shield passives in it. GD combines Warfare and Defense into Soldier, resulting into something that leaves me wanting.
I guess Crate will include them to their shield mastery.
Imho, a shield mastery is impossible to add to GC in its current form. Because so many shield skills are already in the soldier’s tree, whoever picks this new shield mastery, will pretty much have to go for soldier as well.
I don’t see it working, but at the time time I wouldn’t be terribly disappointed if GD devs proved me wrong
GD masteries are much more diverse than TQ ones.
Soldier still favours 1h+shield the most, while Shaman favours 2-handers and Nightblade favours dual-wielding.
They don’t feel more diverse to me, they just look alike and share a lack of focus. I’ve thinking for weeks about building a caster next and I still don’t know how to go about it. Besides soldier, every mastery has some cast type abilities, but they usually synergize rather poorly and there’s literally no reason to choose one damage type over another. Vitality seems to stand out a little, but not because of skills/masteries, but because it’s easier to debuff resists and there are more items that work.
The intention to build every mastery in a way that allows players to play it as they see fit is commendable. But for me, it just makes everything look the same.
/rant Maybe I’m getting too old for ARPGs.