Shields

Shields come as round shields, tower shields and bucklers, with 6 to 158 block armour. A shield replaces the block power, parry force and parry bonus of whatever is in your other hand.

Combat

Pros

It overrides the weapon entirely, which frees your weapon slot to be pure damage. A Mistwalker's own 48 block armour stops mattering the moment you equip a shield.
A parry costs no stamina at all, while a block costs up to 10, and it multiplies the shield's block armour by the parry bonus: 1.5x on a round shield and 2.5x on a buckler.
A successful parry staggers the attacker. A staggered creature cannot move and takes double damage until it recovers, which is the largest damage multiplier available to a melee build.
A successful block stops status effects from landing at all, so a blocked Blob hit applies no poison.

Cons

It costs the off-hand, so a shield build can never use a two-handed weapon and gives up the reach and stagger those carry.
Tower shields cannot parry at all. In hand they usually cost 10% movement speed against 5% for the others, which raises the cost of a dodge roll by the same amount.
The parry window is under 0.25 seconds before the blow lands. Miss it and you have paid a block's stamina for a block's protection.
Bosses are immune to stagger, so the parry payoff, the whole point of the buckler, does nothing in the fights that matter most.

Builds

Buckler if you can parry, tower if you cannot. A buckler has the best parry bonus at 2.5x and the worst raw block armour, while a tower shield has the highest raw numbers and no parry. A round shield sits between them at 1.5x, with the same 5% movement cost as a buckler.

Parry, then hit. Time it under 0.25 seconds before the blow and you spend no stamina, while the attacker staggers and takes double damage. The loop is a parry into the 3-hit combo, and it is worth more than any weapon upgrade in the game.

Know what a shield does not stop. Slash, pierce, blunt and lightning fill your stagger bar, which is 40% of your maximum health. Fire, frost, poison and spirit are reduced by block armour but never stagger you. Bigger health pools therefore block bigger hits.

The Blocking skill adds 0.5% block armour per point, 50% at 100. It levels on every blocked hit, with a bonus for a parry, so the shield improves just by being used the way you were going to use it anyway.

Shields are made at the Forge, the Workbench, the Black forge and the Frost Foundry, and on Console.

The skill is Blocking, and it levels by use rather than by choice.

Best Shields

Build	Name	Stats
Best guard	Nord Greatshield	158 block armour
Lightest to carry	Bronze Buckler	3 weight
Longest lasting	Nord Buckler	400 durability

Notes

Blocking costs up to 10 stamina, more when more damage gets through. The block breaks if the damage that gets through fills the stagger bar, which holds 40% of maximum health, or if stamina runs out.
Block force is how far a blocked melee attacker gets knocked back. It ranges from 50% to 100% depending on how much of the shield's block armor the hit used.
Weapons have their own parry bonus too: 4x on a Knife and 6x on Flesh Rippers. Both are higher than any shield's, but they multiply the weapon's own small block armor.