Stoneshard – Mace & Shield Stunlock (Build Guide)

A complete guide to the mace & shield build. Welcome to Stoneshard Mace & Shield Stunlock build. A complete guide to bashing your enemies faces.

Your Hero

Note: Credit goes to Landa

Until custom character creation is avaliable our first choice is picking one of the pregenerated characters. Since we are gonna be focusing on melee combat our choice is pretty much narrowed down to characters with a higher than average STR score and a useful trait.

Jorgrim, the Reaver

• Affinity: Axes, Swords, Maces, Shields
• Unique trait: Berserker Frenzy (increased Weapon Damage and Crit Efficiency for 10 turns after every kill)

Stat allocation for Jorgrim is almost perfect. Strength is going to be our main focus on this build and having some extra vitality is always useful. What really makes Jorgrim shine is his trait. As soon as you drop your first enemy your damage will ramp up which will allow you to clean enemies even faster. Jorgrim is better suited for a more offensive build. Focusing on mace damage and using shield bash and counter strikes as a setup.

Pro

• Great Stat allocation
• Very Offensive trait

Cons

• Bad starting gear (Almost no protection)

Arna, the Maiden Knight

• Affinity: Swords, Maces, Shields, Greatswords
• Unique trait: Vow of the Feat (every enemy within your vision range decreases Cooldowns Duration and Abilities Energy Cost)

Stat allocation for Arma is decent. Although her strength is not as high as Jorgrim her starting gear makes the first few levels a lot easier. Her trait helps with energy managemment and can provide with almost infinite Raise Shield when swarmed. If you favor a more defensive style and want to use counter strikes and shield bash as your main damage source then Ama is your choice.

Pro

• Best Starting gear
• More starting energy and reduced ability costs

Cons

• Less starting Strength

Skill Branches

We will be focusing our build on 2 skill branches. One handed mace and shield. Our main priority will be picking up our combo skills. After that we should try to get as many passives as possible since they complement the build very well and provide some very much needed energy management.

Stun forces enemies to skip their turn. Daze is comparable to “silence” effect, preventing enemies from using abilities. Dazing an enemy twice gives them the stunned condition. Our goal is to set up enemies with an initial daze through shield bash or a counter attack and combine this with Onslaught to stun them. If the enemy is still alive after this we use Finish Off for to blow them up.

Maces

Maces are the best crowd weapon as most of their abilities are focused around Dazing and Stunning your opponents.

• Onslaught allows you to burn enemy’s Energy, Knock them back, move one tile forward and then apply Daze.
• Armor Break does significant damage to Armor, especially if the target is Stunned or Dazed and also increases further damage taken by the enemy.
• Finish Off does bonus damage for each remaining turn of Stun or Daze affecting the enemy and also puts their abilities on cooldown.
• Hammer and Anvil does bonus Armor Damage with a chance to Daze – as with the rest of the weapon buffs, it’s stacked by delivering attacks.

Shields

Shields provide incredible surviibility for melee builds and as soon as you pick some skills they quickly become a weapon on their own.

• Raise Shield provides high Block Chance against incoming blows and arrows for a few turns.
• Shield Bash deals small damage with a chance to Daze.
• Breakthrough strikes three adjacent enemies with a shield, dealing damage and Knocking them back.
• Defensive Stance will decrease Damage Taken and raise Counter Chance when your character is hit.