Off hand for a Troll

The Tavern Dungeon Crawling Advice
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Been playing with a Troll monk, and not really sure about what to do with off hand. Starts off with an Orb of Light, nice to have a see invis but not sure how much it helps with combat.

At one point, I thought I understood shields, but they have been revamped. At about what skill level now is a kite shield worth using? Tower shield?

Thoughts, ideas, suggestions?

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I always like to grab a shield if I can. You are worried about swing speed, so I just periodically check that to see if it is acceptable when I’m wanting to wield a shield and training up the skill for the first time. Just put it on and see if your swing speed is good, and if it isn’t unwield it.

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Light makes everything inside the halo (except you) easier to hit. It is significant in the early game, like an XL1 TrMo goes from from 38% to miss to 21% to miss. It also nukes your stealth.

Shield is definitely the play eventually, I personally would switch to shield as you find one. For Tr & other heavy melee, tower shield is prob worth using at 0 skill. Even though you attack >1.0 delay, having a shield will greatly increase your “combat power”.

Quick calcs if you care about attacking <1.0 delay with tower shield:

  • At 0 skill, 20 str, a tower shield gives -3.6 EV. That’s 1d(3.6) aut slower on average, or up to -0.4 dA slower per swing.
  • For UC: {10.8 UC, 12 Shields}, {16.2 UC, 4.5 Shields) gets you attacking at/below 1.0 consistently, assuming you have 20 str.
  • The real breakpoints are (0.7 delay, 4.5 Shields} & {0.8 delay, 12 shields}, assuming you have 20 Str. So if you get mindelay on a whip of elec, a tower shield is “fine” to use at 0 skill. Of course you should still train the skill.

(If you want to do the calcs yourself, you can view the wiki page on shields.)

IMO the other orbs aren’t worth using for most characters. Guile is very very strong, but also instakills you (paralysis) unless you have stupid amounts of extra MR.

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I have the opposite opinion, I rarely use shields. They significantly reduce your damage output, by slowing down your main attacks and disabling offhand attack, and you also need to train an additional skill to mitigate this somewhat (but you will not completely eliminate damage reduction), meaning your other skills will be lower. The defense the shiled provides is not working against many dangerous attacks, and it is much worse if multiple enemies can attack you, which is exactly the situation you would like to have defense, especially on a char with a very strong attack. If there is only one enemy next to you, it should be dead very quickly.

For me best defense is offense, and trolls has very good hp.

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Orb of light is pretty strong early on. It improves your accuracy, which is most useful for low level chars. A kite shield is worth using and training for as soon as you find it. There’s no real need for a tower shield, especially in a 3-rune game. But if you find a nice one, switch as soon as your attack delay is 1.0 or less. Press @ to check your attack delay.

I like shields so much that I prefer to start trolls as fighters.

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