Shield upgrades

My question is a simple one. Whenever I find a shield that I like enough to upgrade I always upgrade it along the regular upgrade path. My question is, is it ever wise to upgrade a shield down an elemental path lightning, magic, fire, etc...?

I know it makes its defensive properties stronger against its specific elemental type but doesn't the shield remain stuck at its original stability.

Maybe I'm just missing something, but, nevertheless, I'd love to get the community's input.

Crystal will give insane stability, but no one really understands how it effects it at this point. But along elemental upgrades I've never seen if it changes the stability or specific resistances.

It's my understanding that all the other paths do is give the shield's bash the properties of those paths. Much like when you upgrade weapons. I'm also pretty sure that the stability will stay at its base.

I could be wrong on both counts. That's just my understanding of it.

Elemental paths upgrade resistances along that path, unless the shield already has too high of a resistance to up it. So say, you have a Warrior Round Shield. You can upgrade that along the magic path, and get close to I think around 80% magical block. I'm not sure if it works with great shields, but I upgrade most of my shields no along elemental paths so I can block more than one type, though I often use them more for Parrying in PvP this is mainly for PvE.

I've definitely claimed that very explanation on this forum before and been told I was wrong.

@Plastic: There was a major drive to update the shields on the wiki pages a few months ago. Based on the efforts there, it was found that raising elemental shield upgrades do indeed improve that shields damage reduction against that magic type. It was also found that divine shields scale with intelligence rather than faith . You can take a look at the following thread for more details:

https://soulswiki.forumotion.com/t1580-shields-pages

That makes sense. I'm pretty sure I claimed it originally because I had tried it. I can't remember now. I always use standard too. Anyway I was "set straight" pretty quickly, hence my original post here. That's a little odd about the divine path. Coding error maybe?

seems like a coding error, yeah, and divine/magic upgrades DO upgrade resistance to magic, but remember when you upgrade along a path separate from normal the stability gets reset, not sure how much it upgrades from +0 etc after that point though.

its not really that useful in most cases though, except for maybe offensive or RP purposes

Yup, definitely look at the wiki for this question (follow berkut's link!).

Some shields lend themselves better to certain upgrades path. Like Tolvo mentioned, the Warrior's Round Shield is amazingly suited for the Magical upgrade, going all the way to 84.5% magic resistance--the highest of any shield in the game except Havel's and the Crystal Ring Shield, but weighing only 1 lb.!

It's true that it will keep the shield's stability at base, though. But, depending on your intended use, this isn't necessarily an issue. I like to have the Magic Warrior's Round Shield +10 for fighting the 4 Kings. I only pull it off my back to block their magic missile, then I go right back to 2-handing my weapon. Its stability only allows me to block 1 hit, but that's all I need. And with that magic resistance rating, the Kings' magical attacks do barely any damage.

A Fire Effigy Shield +10 (3 lbs.) is also a good choice. With 90 Phys, 84 Fire, and 90 Lightning block, it's a perfect complement to the Magic Warrior's Round Shield. With a Heater +15 for 100% phys block and surprising stability, you're very well set for shields, all of them at 3 lbs or less.

Have a look on the page, see what suits your style.

Note that my link is to the thread for when we were working on the shields page (it is the thread we used to talk about it (by me I mean BLA1NE and Whknight). The following link leads to the wikis shields page.

http://darksoulswiki.wikispaces.com/Shields