Heavy Shield Help

I decided to pick up a giant's set, shield and weapon included, and its the first time I've ever pulled a heavy shield in a fight, any suggestions for how to make use of it? Or what good the L2 is at all?

L2 doesn't do anything the kick can't. They're good for soaking hits and turtling, there's no real trick or special way to use them.

Thank you, and post patch, will the heavy shields get buffed, maybe gain an actual recoil in pvp?

It seems they do against spears and rapiers, but not other things, to be honest, they are not worth it what so ever. The extra stability can be helpful, but the Sliver Knight's Shield is so good that it beats the crap out of the smaller greatshields, and the larger ones are so big you can't really use them without fat rolling or some extra END or Havel's Ring.

The kick the shields bash does blocks during the bash.
Havels Shield has a buff that makes people stagger when hitting you.
greatshields are mostly good for absorbing hits, and they deflect smaller weapons in PvP in PTDE

If you're going to use a Heavy Shield, use a spear or other thrusting weapon as your main. I only recommend either Havel's Greatshield or Greatshield of Artorias.Havel's will protect against practically all damage and Artorias' is practically unbreakable (Even in PvE)

Havel's is probably the most useful greatshield overall, it blocks so much lightning, fire, and magic with incredible stability. My favorite shield though is the Silver Knight Shield. It has 76 stability, more than enough to tank hits from big weapons and it can parry too. It's also lighter than all the other greatshields (it weighs the same as the eagle shield)

Big shield are basically for nothing but damage absorption and less stamina loss. You can throw people far off by having a parrying shield off hand and just parrying them when they're spamming the r1 into your greatshield .

Also, greatshield of Artorias blocks poison, toxic, bleed and curse build ups. And bonewheel shield can be a decent weapon in the right hands but the attack leaves you wide open for backstabs.

Uparkaam wrote:Also, greatshield of Artorias blocks poison, toxic, bleed and curse build ups. And bonewheel shield can be a decent weapon in the right hands but the attack leaves you wide open for backstabs.

Since this is in PvP, I can say, no it doesn't. This shield doesn't work right in PvP.

I did a SL65 Iron Tarkus cosplay and found greatshields very effective. Because there's no way they're going to chop through your stamina bar, it limits what attacks they can do. It also had insane anti-pyromancy abilities; GC didn't do too much.

Which left them trying to do chip damage, or circle for backstabs. By unlocking and unleashing my Great Sword (THE great sword), I found I could trade blows or stagger my opponent.

You trade parrying for extremely high stability and normally above average resistances (or amazing ones, in the case of Havels).

As a more aggressive player, whose parries are standard if not poor, I've kind of found the heavy shield as being excellent and unexciting at the same time.

Thank you, everybody, these fat bastard shields will doubtless be fun for fun builds, but given how easily the L2 can just be walked through, it'll never be a good exchange when I already have the kick.