Hi Everyone, This is my first character and he just reached level 27 last night. I noticed that my melee attacks seem to do about the same damage with a two handed weapon or a lesser damaging one handed weapon. This leads me to beleive that two handed weapons are only benefiticial damage wise in the case of auto attacks and double attack procs. Is there any other reason to use two handers over one handers? How good are shields really? it doesnt say a direct mitigation boost like my other armor peices do, so I am not aware of what exactly they do. My block value seems to increase by 20%. Is a block 100% damage avoidance or only partial? if so how much? I am trying to see why I wouldnt just want to use a really nice shield and a one hander for soloing, grouping, whatever. The one hander swings faster, it might do less damage over all, but is that really a big difference? It seems that all my damage really comes from my combat arts and repentance/heretics doom anyway, all of which do not seem to be affected by weapon choice. Oh also, the AA shield ally, does it work better if I use a shield as opposed to a two hander? Thank you for the input.
Only use a shield in the case where you - For some reason have a really amazing one handed weapon and no two-handed weapon - Have full points in the agility line for Shield Ally and are trying to be a raid tank or very difficult heroic zone healer. Shield Ally is useless if you are not using a shield.
Yes your combat arts are not affected by the weapon damage, but normally ~1/3rd (at low level even more likely 50-60%) of your damage come from auto attack. So it is the biggest part of your damage. Switching from 2handed to 1handed normally reduces your auto attack damage by at least 1/3rd. That is a substantial amount of damage. If you block an attack you do not take any damage. But even 20% if often not really 20% but less vs most mobs that matter. But as already mentioned. Shield Ally only transfers your chance to block. If you are not using a shield it does almost nothing. But remember that Shield Ally is only a small benefit: - A good tank should have >60% block / avoidance. (more likely a lot higher, but lets keep it low for now) - Of the remaining 40% that would hit the tank you have a 60% chance to try to block. meaning 24% of the attacks. - Now you have most likely an avoidance of 30% at max. making it ~7% of the attacks you actually block. (At high level it is more like 2-3% of the avoidance of a tank.) If you are grouping a lot it would be better to spec the most right line in the Cleric tree to gain the fast cast and Divine Recovery as that should help you more then Shield Ally at low levels where fast cast gear is virtually nonexistent.
I think Shield Ally should transfer your chance to dodge (or parry if you somehow got the ability to parry) too. It's just that in any serious zone at the endgame any avoidance that isn't uncontested doesn't do anything. Using Shield Ally vs not using it can be quite noticible in raid zones but I don't think I would see any point in the easier heroics. I have a 11.7% chance to block so with 10 points in shield ally it should give the tank 11.7 * .6 or about 7% uncontested avoidance seperate from his own avoidance. (They don't add, so the end result is that it's worth less than 7% but still valuable) However, this is with a Kraytoc's Hard Mode shield and a lot of shield benefits, a normal Inquisitor is going to be giving garbage. As a low level soloing Inquisitor you should be heading towards the battle lines and using whatever combination of AAs/Items maximizes your damage output. Even grouping I would suggest this same path but paying more attention on party health and only bashing when you have your reactives up.
