Elden ring best small shield reddit

Asking both for pve and pvp. Hardly anyone is seen using shields in videos, I’m asking because I’m an old school DS player, I feel lost without a shield 😅 Should I start fighting against my instincts? I’m pretty bad parrying by the way.

They lose effectiveness the further into the game you go, as enemies start hitting harder and harder. And they tend to not be as good for parry as smaller shields.

Granted, you can somewhat mitigate the weakness of the medium shield with the Scholar's Shield spell, or the Barricade ash of war. But both of those are even more effective on greatshields.

Where does that leave medium shields? Not great for blocking, since you'll lose a lot more stamina to do so. And that means the opportunity cost of trying a block counter is also raised. But also not good for parrying either.

So what's the point of them? Does anyone in the community have a good argument for medium shields?

I made a Dex/Int Rot-Build and decided to use a medium Shield so that I can slow down combat once Rot is applied. However, in my experience, I get Stance Broken from pretty much every hit despite me using fortify Shield. Are Medium Shields just that bad? Or is it more likely that I just lost track of my stamina and that thats the reason for that?

I noticed you can attack and block at the same time with small shields, so I assume that’s why most don’t have the best physical block stats, but it made me wonder what’s the best it gets to? Bc i might be willing to use a 95 small shield for this…. Can’t find the info online tho… thanks!

Trying to build me a Pally/Templar style knight and so far shields feel awful. It's hard as hell to parry and the stamina cost of a block seems a bit much. Ive resorted to trying a no skill kite shield. I haven't found a greatshield yet so hoping it will feel better. Does upgrading shields lower stamina cost? Ive Been investing pretty heavy in endurance. Still feel like stamina is a common issue and I'm still a fat roller. Maybe I'll just use and finger seal and switch between it and 2 handing. Just really wanted to feel like a Tank. Damn crucible knights must be on roids.

Im not sure if the buckler is better than all the rest of them or if its just its ash of war. If so is it possible to duplicate it and place it on another small shield? Its truly an eye sore on a fully golden knight.

Best Small Parry Shield just for Parrying? from Eldenring

So I started off with bandit class to get the buckler so I could start working on my parry game from the beginning. But then I found the carian retaliation and golden parry ash of wars and like... these are just strictly better parry abilities. Aside from things like the coil shield or something like that, is there any reason at all to use small shields at this point in the game? I can't see any.

I just beat Commander Niall solo and I'd read people having a nasty time with him so it felt timely. They don't have 100% physical block but guard counters against normal enemies often leave them vulnerable to a crit so use the health back on crit talisman. But outside of that, the parry frames on these things are really quite forgiving and there are a lot of good ashes of war that provide a parry plus extras - thops barrier doubles as a magic parry and will still work as a normal parry with 0 fp, carian retaliation is even better (you can just parry the Godskin boss fireballs and win), there's one that parries bolts in flight Witcher stylee and a faith one that extends the range.

The rift shield has made crucible knights go from a tense encounter to an easy one, even the 2v1 (not easy but not hair pullingly bullshit either - don't know how I would have done them without it). The bell bearing hunter/elemer can be parried, r2'd, parried and riposted repeatedly. Commander Niall's 2 summons have different levels of aggro so they can be separated and parried to death, and then his slam was easy to bait and parry the follow up as well.

It's worth the time investment to practice imo and it made some of these fights go from hell to manageable. Even if you don't get a riposte critical it will break combo chains which has been huge for me. But i didn't feel that way at first because using the medium shield parry was really tight - small shields are where it's at. Useable for a last of chain block counter also, lightweight and stylish. It's so much a feature of my play that my exploring talisman setup is crit heal/fp and dagger talisman and these shields give me the confidence to step up and parry enemies I haven't seen before. Also partial parries won't chunk your health the way mistimed dodges do.

Anyone else running small shields?