Riot Gear optimal usage

[cypherusuh]

Is there any setup that makes riot gear performs better than tac vest / metal armor? It seems that RG w/ shield usually weight as much / more than metal armor w/ Armor Sloping. And the shield mod practically removed ~40% of weapon category due to 1handed limitation (unless I mistaken some weapons with 2handed animation is actually counts as 1h).

Is it better to think that RG w/o shield = Tac Vest but to counter wildlife, such as Stalker, while swapping to Tac Vest for human combat for more bullet absorption. and the shield mod as optional light tanker gimmick, rather than must have mod?
Also, what weapon would works great with RG? And does investing on additional block feat worth it? especially since it's quite easy to focus on non-stalker melee enemies before they attacked

[Faeren]

Honestly the RG shields are underwhelming, unless you really want to try a shield build for the novelty you're better off steering clear of them. At low to mid quality the recent threshold buff can make RG preferable to TV as a general purpose armor. For example a TV with 8 threshold could instead be a RG with 10, the latter gives you 20 threshold against melee and bullets as well as doubled resistance against melee, the TV only has 4 more threshold against bullets.

To top this off RG gets a bigger HP bonus from Sturdy Vests, Metal armor receives 100% of the bonus, RG 75% and TV 50%. Prior to completing Depot A you can't do much better than some Riot Gear with a good laminated plate and a sturdy vest, even low HP characters become fairly durable when kitted up in it.

[newageofpower]

Shield blocking + block feats is very strong for melee builds. Dagger/Sword/Spear (with mastery) all do pretty well with carrying a board on your arm. Just as with other builds, try to kill opponents you find most threatening first. Riot with shield almost no sells knife attacks and deals well with fist, but hammer is still problematic (imho).

You can use pistols/energy/chem with shields too, but the synergy is much weaker.

[HulkOSaurus]

You can really mitigate a lot of melee damage with some feats on. I think only sledges can actually come through. It's up to you to decide whether that trade-off is worth it in the end.

I generally prefer metal armours more, but on a Juggernaut with Crafting I can see the benefit of going into RG for some encounters.

[cypherusuh]

I guess it's pretty much an alternative for STR 3 no dodge/Eva build. I think for sword, metal is usually better since it requires 7 STR anyways, and pistol with 5 str is kinda wasted stats, since they need both Dex and Per. Shield can't really works well enough, and Shield Arm, which helps a lot with shield, requires 8 STR at which point, SuperSteel should works at least similarly well.

Imo Iron Grip isn't worth it since it lowers damage output and spear guard works as good, or better than shield, especially when you could take Spear Guardian which makes block chance 100% with specialization. And it works much better alongside SS metal armor for more protection in general

It would be much better if RG shield also block ranged :/