If you don't want to bother with parrying and / or play with friends and want to be the tank then it's okeyish. If you use spear with it, you can attack and go back to block in a half sec. But you can do it with round shields as well so..

Heavy movement penalty and easy parry mechanic makes it weak compared to round shields. Succesful parry will block more damage than tower shield of the same tier.

I use them simply because they looks cool.

EDIT: if you play pvp then tower shields can be better choice since it's hard to time parry against other players. But most would probably still go with round one due to movement penalty which is crucial in pvp.

If you don't want to bother with parrying and / or play with friends and want to be the tank then it's okeyish. If you use spear with it, you can attack and go back to block in a half sec. But you can do it with round shields as well so..

Heavy movement penalty and easy parry mechanic makes it weak compared to round shields. Succesful parry will block more damage than tower shield of the same tier.

I use them simply because they looks cool.

EDIT: if you play pvp then tower shields can be better choice since it's hard to time parry against other players. But most would probably still go with round one due to movement penalty which is crucial in pvp.

I have another use for tower shield: training your block skill.

Let something (most optimally another player with a dagger) attack you repeatedly while just plain blocking. Semi-to-full AFK. Tower shields work better for this because their straight block value is larger, which means less stamina used on attacks that are fully blocked. Parrying gets double skill per parry, but you get hit less often and it isn't worth being attentive for how long it takes to train.

It's for group play where people can do specific roles. That being said things definately need rebalanced, hopefully they'll add more of a difference between light and agile equipment builds and heavy tank builds.

I use the fully upgraded black metal shield and highly recommend it, this is coupled with padded armor top and bottom, the drake helmet and the lox cape. with this i have 94 armor i think lol

As others said, right now not favored due to 2 things, 1) cant parry, 2) movment penalty

I wouldn't mind the not parry so much. Parry for me is more of "oh look it happened" kind of thing.

But that movement penalty is way too much to make that type practical to use.

Afaik devs did mentioned a re-balance of stamina and block stuff coming with the food rework, so we might see this addressed when the big patch finally drops.

Originally posted by RasaNova:

Yeah, they seem pointless. Slightly better blocking isn't worth the penalties. Now, if they had another advantage over small shields, such as reduced stamina drain... That might help to them flesh out a tank role.

The Serpent Shield kinda circumvents that by having the benefits of a tower shield without the usual penalties, but like fully upgraded troll gear and stagbreaker, I think it comes at a time in the game when it's already too late because your health/stamina pool are so high
& the black metal round shield is so strong that it's almost pointless.
Other than that, yeah, sadly tower shields are great decorations and somewhat useful when
soloing Yagluth.

Honestly it would probably be pretty even in the long run if each upgrade gave it +10 block instead since they can't parry. Or if they took reduced stamina damage. *Something* to take it over round shields. Currently the fact it just... has one less feature than round shields makes it kinda a terrible balance.

Yeah, they seem pointless. Slightly better blocking isn't worth the penalties. Now, if they had another advantage over small shields, such as reduced stamina drain... That might help to them flesh out a tank role.

Wait... thoes arent just for decor?!?

The ONLY place I have found wall shields useful are when you play with friends and have to tank a boss like Moder, Bonemass and Yagluth. It works well in those situations, albeit short lived but is otherwise useless to carry around for anything else.

Thing is I do fine parrying things and it even increases our damage as anyone can get riposte damage from a shield parry.

The only reason I myself can see for using a large shield is if you are not confident in parrying (Which is fine.)

Hope they add more block to large shields cause currently upgrading them gives +5 block
But upgrading round shields gives +5 block and parry. Which might as well be +10 block.

If you don't want to bother with parrying and / or play with friends and want to be the tank then it's okeyish. If you use spear with it, you can attack and go back to block in a half sec. But you can do it with round shields as well so..

Heavy movement penalty and easy parry mechanic makes it weak compared to round shields. Succesful parry will block more damage than tower shield of the same tier.

I use them simply because they looks cool.

EDIT: if you play pvp then tower shields can be better choice since it's hard to time parry against other players. But most would probably still go with round one due to movement penalty which is crucial in pvp.

A pole and a horizontal item stand makes it look like a table, otherwise yeah they kind of suck. I didn't even know they couldn't parry until now, the movement speed penalty alone is already really bad when dodging is as important as it is.

mostly used to become meatshield