The Legionnaire, [Dagger/Heavy Shield] build

[Owlie]

I have been working on this build since the previous update. This time, it involve utilizing elusiveness currently broken damage reduction effect which scales up greatly with your vitality. Because you have the confidence to take damage, you can freely let yourself be surrounded by 2-3 enemies at once and somehow came out stronger. Yes! This is a build that are more effective against multiple enemies at once.
This post will be my final treatise on this build

Offensive

For the offensive will have to rely on (counter) and (on hit) effects from shield's [Moment of Retribution] which adds counter chance. Dagger strike with [Counterattack Mastery] also add more counter chance with each hit (including ones from counter). You will immediately get a cascading amount of counter without even having to invest on agility or any high counter equipments. Hold the line will help you get started on it since it also give high counter chance even at the lowest stack.

Defensive

While you're not a dodge build, you will be using [elusiveness] followed by raise shield to make yourself virtually invulnerable for the 8 turns it is active. [Elusiveness] at 20 vit give 10% per stack up to 50%. At 25 vit, it give 12.5% per stack up to 67.5%. Arna's Vow of the Feat, and [Hold the line] certain enchantments will ring those number up to 75% maximum allowed by the game. That mean you will only take 1/4th of the damage for the 8 turns it lasts.
Low block regen of heavy shields will be compensated by reduced damage from weakening jabs. Don't worry as you'll be able to make it up with the bonuses from the shield skill tree. It will only look scary at the start because you'll appear to only have 1% minimum block power regen, but it will climb up as your vitality increases. So even without [elusivness], you are still extremely durable

The Build

Character: Arna (her unique perk is required to make this work)
Attributes
- Strength (5)
- Vitality (9)
- Vitality (13)
- Agility (18)
- Vitality (23)
- Strength/Perception (28)
- Vitality/Perception Dump (30)

Skills
- First Two: Raise Shield and Breakthrough
- Retribution (2)
- Take a ride or walk to mannshire after first or second bounty and learn dagger skill from gelrot to pick up double stab (3)
- Quick hand (4) the Resilience (5)
- Opportune Moment (6) and Deadly Trick (7)
- Free choice (8): Preferably cauterize or self repair
- Learn athletics from Bran if you haven't already the pick disengage (9) dash (10) to elusiveness (whenever it is available)
- Gaping Wound (12) and Weakening Jabs (13)
- Last Bastion (14) and make sure you would already switched to a heavy shield right about now.
- Shield Bash (15)
- Counterattack Mastery (16) and Hold the Line (17)
- Retaliation (18)

Picks of Equipment
- All Medium Armor (it has a nice balance between reducing your dodge and not taking away too much energy)
- Fist Shield > Council heater shield I looted from the Siege camp in front of brynn > Skadian/Rider shield > Tower shield > Brynn Pavise
- Commoner's dagger (given by the osbrook captain) > Bollocks dagger > Baselard/Rondel > Jambiya/Misericode > Assassin's Dagger
- Leather belt > Chain belt > Footman Belt > Knightly Girdle > Plated Belt
- Jousting Cloak or Nistrian Noble cloak (sold by nistrian merchant on brynn docks at respect)

Post Completion (19+)
- Self repair, Not this time, Cauterize, Seal of Cleansing, and Pathfinder are among the very useful additions to you regardless of your build
- Pick up the rest of the dagger skills to refine your offensive abilities
- Pick up other athletics skills to further refine your defensive abilities

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3392166501

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3392170263
Just to show how this build work. It really do get stronger the more enemy I'm fighting at once. I can easily take down herd of buffalo, gulon, and the surface of a tier 4/5 bastion, But I do still struggle trying to solo a single robber baron with this build

[brown29knight]

Nice! This is how the old quarterstaff build used to play.

What jewelry would you use?

[Owlie]

Originally posted by brown29knight:

Nice! This is how the old quarterstaff build used to play.

What jewelry would you use?

If you're talking about that purple one. It's a hermit's ring. Found it on a t5 abbey. It's a combination of sapphire and emerald ring which grants both energy and health max + regens

I typicall didn't think much about the accessories. Just that I can enchant it with move/control/bleed resistance so I don't break my defense