Shield Up vs Parry?

[Riou1231]

When hunting animals, which maneuver should I be using? So far I've only used Shield Up, then spam Quick Barrage and use Full Circle once I get enough openings to kill it. If I get enough initiative from Quick Barrage, I use Opportunity Knocks.

If I'm using Parry, I figure I could just spam Quick Barrage to get initiative from it. Then use Steal Thunder to reduce the animal's initiative and increase my own, then I just throw in some Stings here and there to kill it. Is this the proper way to go about using Parry? Or is there something else I'm missing? Would it be better to just spam Quick Barrage and Full Circle?

Also, how important is the 250% block weight from Shield Up compared to the 80% you get from Parry? I don't particularly understand how the math behind block weight works.

[Sevenless]

In this particular case, block weight (the 250% vs 80%) determines how much of an opening an animal creates on you. Generally speaking, you hunt things you can kill with them doing 0 or close to 0 damage to you. Block would only be important for animals like trolls or mammoths I'd say. Everything else speed is priority, and you should just grind your stats more. Which means basically parry 100% of the time, if you can't kill something with parry on don't bother yet.

Depending on your stats, the pattern is QB for IP/damage, cleave for kill, defenses as needed. Or, if you're stronger, QB for IP, flex for blue opening, sting for kill (unlikely you'll need defenses much, but use them as required to keep them below 30ish to avoid damage).

You'll notice that this is a pure melee build, and doesn't worry much about animal IP. It depends on quickly overpowering animals with raw damage rather than dealing with finesse of UA attacks and the like. UA is still very useful for PvP, but there's not a huge need for it in solo PvE. Op knock is useful to mix in if you have a pretty high UA, but it isn't really required for most things only the big boys like mammies and trolls being hunted in groups. You can bruteforce openings with parry and QB just fine on everything else.

[qoonpooka]

Parry does require a sword. If you're still working with your stone axe, Shield-Up is a godsend; it gets you off of your UA pool ASAP so you can focus.

Once you have bronze, though...

[r21187]

in my case i just strated using parry and using the attack that does green and blue damage as parry incrase their blue opening normaly i would have to wait to have 50% to kill it but

wut now with 30% green and 20% or more of blue i get the enough faster to kill it so if were animals bigger i would get the 100% even more faster

[azrid]

Quick barrage+parry+cleave are the moves I use for hunting.

[NOOBY93]

Shield up is trash, just use parry to kill it faster, if you still can't kill it raise your stats and gg, hunting is trivial

[thesoldier]

I use parry, and for hunting I use
Quick Barrage, until I get 6 IP for cleave. If the animal is still alive after cleave I then use Knock it's teeth out.

[r21187]

Shield up is trash, just use parry to kill it faster, if you still can't kill it raise your stats and gg, hunting is trivial

i wont say that

when i was a hermit i put my main char 2 shields and lure animals that could kill me HELL FAST and i dont know but i really think the 2 shields and the shield up help me a little until i could lure them to a pali trap i made after that i kill them trowing a hell load of stones xD

i learned after that killing by using low lvl ranged low A LOT the quality so i learned to fight melee but when you are starting and whant to have hides i think that help a lot cause my shield were a lot low lvl too LoL

[NOOBY93]

Shield up is trash, just use parry to kill it faster, if you still can't kill it raise your stats and gg, hunting is trivial

i wont say that

when i was a hermit i put my main char 2 shields and lure animals that could kill me HELL FAST and i dont know but i really think the 2 shields and the shield up help me a little until i could lure them to a pali trap i made after that i kill them trowing a hell load of stones xD

i learned after that killing by using low lvl ranged low A LOT the quality so i learned to fight melee but when you are starting and whant to have hides i think that help a lot cause my shield were a lot low lvl too LoL

xD

2 shields or 1 makes no difference, and shield up doesn't give you that much more defense, it doesn't defend 2.5x more than, say, to arms, it just acts as if you have 2.5x more melee and use to arms, and since there's a 4th root on combat skills, that's not too much, the effect from parry is much more powerful, and the best defensive manuever is oak stance by FAR.

[Potjeh]

Don't you have marginally more armor if you equip a second shield?