How To Use It: Greater Magic Shield

[Doctor Teo]

Alright, so I'm kind of just screwing around at this point. I'm pretty much done with NG, so I've taken a few hours to relax and screw with builds. Done with Strength, I looked to Magic. Well, it looks like Magic is a lot weaker in this game than DKS2, so as wicked cool as Friede's Scythe and the Crystal Sage's Rapier are, I don't see myself really using sorceries, what with some of the old spells like Soul Vortex and Shockwave gone, and Soul Greatsword so much weaker.

So as I'm looking into maybe making Pyromancies work and starting to plan a Miracle build for my next respec, on a whim I decided to use a spell I haven't used in any of the Dark Souls games:

Greater Magic Shield

This friggin' useless thing. It was useless in 1, it was useless in 2, and I'm pretty sure it's still useless in 3. But... the way it works in 3 is kind of cute. Greater Magic Shield increases the stability of one's shield by 35, and grants it 100% damage resistance to all damage types, even if the shield has crap defense.

From a PvP perspective, nobody is using a shield; pretty much everyone is 2handing and rolling around. After all, 2-handing crushes shields, so there's really no point to have one most of the time. I did a few experiments, and using the Wargod shield at +8 (it's just what I had on hand), I have 98 stability, making two handed hits consume... practically nothing when struck, smashed, and even when someone bothers to kick, there's almost no drain.

So I think this is actually kind of cute, and I decided I kind of want to try it before I respec, but I have no idea how to make it work. My cutesy thing was to wait until someone had drained themself of stamina, then with my fresh stamina bar, jump into Friede's Scythe Weapon Arts. Works fine, until someone remembers to just not deplete all their stam in one go and leaves enough to roll, but this strat stops working when the buff runs out anyways (takes too long to recast). I could always just cheese and go for backstabs, but I think I could do better.

But maybe I'm thinking of this from the wrong angle. I like shields with the Weapon Art skill, but I could always go for a parry shield with this setup. The Iron Round Shield is the highest stability small shield in the game; it typically has only 40% damage resist, but that's boosted to 100% with Greater Magic Shield, and with 62 stability when fully upgraded, it goes way up to 97 Stability when enchanted, making it almost impervious to stamina drain.

Help me out here - I want to give this stupid spell an honest go before I respec, but I think I might be missing something. I'm thinking primarily PvP, but PvE ideas could be fine too.

[Piglet]

Duel charm against Greater magic shield i see to many people try the spell and get surprised when they see it getting removed also friede is good but WA second attack is parryable and ridicously easy so sadly.

[TrueArchery]

Rather use magic shield, much longer duration. Narrows down the shield selection, but more bang for your buck.

If you put on the untrue rings it'll hide the visual effect, so you can mislead others.