My experience playing a riot shield glass cannon up to level 17

[Red like Black]

First: I took the shield feats as early as possible, in hindsight this was a mistake since the shield is pretty mediocre offensively without spec points (around 100 base damage for 15 AP at level 10 with max boarding up stacks & a quality ~55 shield) & is unreliable defensively.

Second: Deciding on base abilities was a pain since shield feats require you to have 8 strength minimum, deciding on weapons was a bit difficult as well but ultimately I settled on knives.

My thought process while going through weapon options was this:

Swords - Requires spec points, while shield also requires many.

Spears - Very feat heavy, shield costs 3 feats on its own, 4 if you count nimble due to shield having high armor penalty, will also usually take 2 turns to stack boarding up due to high ap cost.

Fists - Very feat heavy and forces you to either use a weaker shield to get lightning punches or spend spec points on lightning punches & a feat on armor sloping.

Ultimately I settled on knives due to them being very light on feat cost while costing low ap meaning I can get boarding up online and start shield bashing from turn 1, I also took significant investment in Temporal Manipulation to ease encounters against robots and to let me bash twice in a turn by combining LTI + shield cooldown spec.



On defensive effectiveness of shields: Surprisingly, even with only 3 con shields are very effective defensively if a bit unreliable due to only having 50 block chance, early on you are likely going to be able to block around 100~ damage (quality ~55 tungsten) with your shield after boarding up and by midgame I was able to craft a shield that can block up to 220 damage (~140 quality tungsten)



Cons of shield: Firstly the armor penalty for riot gear and a tungsten shield is notably high at 46, which pretty much forces you to take nimble if you want to sneak / have significant movement points, I originally planned on taking armor sloping as well but decided 9 armor penalty wasn't worth a feat due to shields being so feat heavy already.

In the early game and until you get specialization points into shield bash to lower its cooldown and ap cost, the build is mediocre in almost every way, with high armor penalty limiting mobility and stealth as well as below average offense and defense due to taking shield perks & nimble early.


Build I used: https://underrail.info/build/?EQgOBwMDAwYALwBfKAA8RS4AAF9FDjAaAAAAXwAAOCTCgis_JsKqPMKrMRPCiOK2tQLfvg

If anyone else has tried playing with riot shields it would be interesting to see your builds & thought processes making them, especially since there are very few riot shield build posts to be found online.

[ciox]

I used fists and had a great time. They synergize well with shield bash because you can very quickly build stacks of Boarding Up and Combo, and then use the Shield Bash on armored enemies to deliver all the accumulated power. This makes up for the weakness of fists against armor. It's possible to use a Tungsten shield with Lightning Punches also.

https://underrail.info/build/?HggPBwQDAwYAWgDCoAAAwqAAZDIAfX1Lc8KCAAAAAAAAZCQxwoIgBsKowqoHS8KrT0VGGMKpwrN4beKhkALip4IB4qe-AeK2tQLitrYD4ra-Bt--

[ShoggothWhisperer]

I tried to make a knife riot shield build work, I played it until about level 20 and gave up. It's simply not worth it. Boarding up is a trap since most 1 handed melee weapons already have a way to block attacks (spear guardian, parry, boxing gloves), making the riot shield redundant. Shield bash doesn't scale damage with melee skill, and even with 5 spec it's just a free ~250 melee attack once per turn that dazes. The only time a riot shield would be relevant would be if you really care about armor penalty on a psi build, since riot armor with a psi beetle shield gives less penalty than a tac vest with a psi beetle plate. A riot shield could theoretically be useful on a pistol build since you probably already have 5 strength for steadfast aim, but you'd probably prefer a tac vest/leather armor.

[dddmemaybe]

The painful thing is that I use Riot Gear on a gunslinger pistol build, but even then I drop the shield for the movespeed, being way better to move good.

If you could use a shield on a super steel regen vest build, it could do wonders with a psionic grenadier tank. But since it's tied to riot gear (lighter character types), and it weighs a shit ton... it just makes you scratch your head.

The worst part is that the shields have a max block of ~55%, whereas the spear has a max block of 100% (2 spec points only into spear guardian, although I'll be fair and say I haven't tested if it's additive or multiplicative in game IIRC at the moment, probably is 100% though). And the spear is still, generally pretty low on the tier list for weapons overall.