*DISCLAIMER: Ice Wizards get tower shield for free so this may not apply to them. Maybe you'll feel something about this*
Hey, so yes, I am a level 95 life wizard in Khrysalis running with5%Universal resist, 91% damage and 91% damage.
I currently have 9 unused training points and have trained Death up to Feint, Balance Tri-Blades, Fire up to Helephant, 8 Sun Enchantments and 3 Star Auras, but not Ice at all and definitely not Tower Shield. Why?
Well to be honest - I don't feel it's worth it at this point as I've made it this far without it. I know that's a pretty bold thing to say since tower shield has been noted as potentially the most valuable spell to have, but I see things in a different light.
In my opinion, there are only 4 instances where tower shield is useful:
1. A defence against Balance or Shadow enemies 2. A defence against fighting multiple bosses 3. Speed questing with little-to-no deck alterations* 4. PVP
1. There is no sole shield against Balance or Shadow besides Stone Wall Treasure Cards and Shadow Shield Item Cards so it makes sense to have tower shield in these situations. 2. Facing multiple bosses, carrying tower shield will help resist any hit by any enemy no matter their school. 3. Rushing through quests with little care about what school you're facing - mostly seen with veterans of the game* 4. Tower shield is a MUST in PVP as you can almost never 100% set shield for a ranked match.
Outside of these points, I don't think you should ever clog your deck with tower shield as it's a lot better to simply train the school set shields or if you feel necessary- buy the treasure card version. The treasure card version comes at a lovely -55% resist.
As well, the school specific shields each give -70% to 2 schools and single school specific shields give -80%. These shields here are a huge increase in resist and in PvE nearly everyone sets up their deck before a fight so it makes sense to put in the specific ones for the job.
As well, the more you level up, the more you will notice enemies using pierce with their attacks so stronger shields are ideal.
I made this thread not to say that tower shield is a horrible spell, it's a great spell and I think it's made its mark on this game.
What I did want to voice is that it is not a necessity to train early on in the game and I think it would be great to use your training points to try other unique styles of school spell combinations.When you hit 100 (and post then-) you should probably carry more treasure card versions or train tower shield as you will encounter a lot more and bosses.
For myself, I have Legend Shield (-70%), Life Shield (-70%), Volcanic Shield (-70%), and Fire Shield (-80%) trained. Since I am the life school, all these shields only cost me a total of 4 training points. I chose this direction as well because I find a lot of people miss out on a shield spell that gives an Ice Shield when they train up to tower shield).
As well, this method simply worked FOR ME as a Life Wizard with my current build. (AKA - I have heals) I'm sure someone will think, "Why not just train up to tower shield for 5 training points and use ice shield treasure cards if I need them?" Sure! That works too!
What are your thoughts? Did you train tower shield yet? Do you carry treasure card versions? Do you love it? Despise it? Have you gone up against a or with no treasure cards? When I reach Level 100, should I try Darkmoor without having trained Tower Shield? Let me know, I'd love to hear for you!
While I can see your point, it's a little silly that you made this thread when the final boss of the game at the moment has incredibly powerful Shadow hits. Tower and Legion Shield are very valuable there.
If you're setting your shields depending on the boss, this means you're probably coming across one of two situations: If your shields are set purely for the boss, then you are completely vulnerable to the minions' attacks. Well, unless it's a school combination like Myth/Death or Storm/Ice or something else you can cover with dual shields. While bosses may start out with more pips than their minions, those minions are still more than capable of hitting you with a powerful attack.
The other situation is that you are setting for both the boss and the minion with separate shields (again, unless their school combination allows for you to use both halves of the dual shields you've trained), which leaves the possibility of you simply drawing the wrong shield at the wrong time.
These actually come up a whole lot in the first arc, where enemies use off-school attacks constantly. You could see a Death enemy blade and trap, then you cast a Death shield only to get hit with a Sunbird or Bats.
The benefit of Tower Shield's versatility is that you can avoid both of these situations. You can guard against the boss and the minion with the same card. And of course that isn't to say it isn't without its disadvantages. One being that moment when one enemy with a lot of pips decides not to attack, but another enemy decides to use a low-pip hit which would remove your shield.
As for Darkmoor, Darkmoor is a series of dungeons in which the enemies all have high amounts of Pierce. If you're going in there with a measly 5% Resist, then I wouldn't bother with Tower Shields. The bosses there can pierce straight through it, leaving you with just your natural Resist. In your case, you'd be spending a turn so that your 5% natural Resist can lower the damage of one attack. It's also particularly bad in the final dungeon. The first boss cheats Pierce if you shield (and his minions cheat Steal Ward constantly), while the final boss will flat-out steal any universal Blade or Shield. Tower Shield is fine against the middle boss, though. You'll probably want to use the Death/Myth dual shield, but you will find your team getting hit with powerful Storm attacks as well.
I've done a similar thing for Feint. I've never learned Feint so I don't have to rely on it. I'm better prepared for fights in which Feint isn't allowed.
I don't bother with tower shield either because I get tons from my plants and rarely even use them.
I think it is more 'essential' if you do PvP, but for PvE I don't even have it as a set part of my side deck.
The only time I add TC towers is when I have a solo battle and think they might be helpful to buy time if I didn't succeed first attempt. Sometimes I'll remember cheats etc if I recently did the battle on another wizard, but usually I forget so any first attempt acts as a reminder or as working out what I'm up against...sometimes I win first try, sometimes it take a second attempt and occasionally a third.
TC towers serve me well. They're free from my plants and give a little extra resist than trained. I regularly sell and give away hundreds of these because I don't use them often.
In all honesty I hardly ever use shields for PvE at all. I only train the shields I get free and if I found a battle where I needed a school specific one I'd just get a few TCs (I remember doing this once for farming a storm boss who was being annoying, other than that I don't remember needing to).
As a result I always have tons of spare training points, so if something evil is introduced where I do need to train them, I can...so far it hasn't happened though.
I use Tower in PvP, but never questing. Outside the arena, shields are rarely helpful, and when they are (select boss battles) you're almost always better using school specific treasure cards so you can draw when you need them.
"Train Ice to Tower" may be the most commonly given bad advice in the game. 99% of the time you are better buffing and hitting than wasting casts shielding in PvE. A tower reduces only the first tic of the first attack by half. An enemy you've defeated does NO damage.
I've never seen such an approach be taken before in all my years of playing.
It seems you've sacrificed your resistance for overall power particularly in the school of. You've also forgone Tower Shield and instead use Dual Shields.
Now, your style is something I personally would not recommend to any player. It's too risky and makes the game much more complicated than it needs to be.
I usually advise new players to train Tower Shield just because of it's high versatility. They will be able to adequately defend themselves in any situation if need be.
New players are usually low on gold and possible have yet to start garden, which is again why I usually recommend they train the card instead. It works out much better for them in the long run, especially if they are soloing and learning the mechanics of the game.
As it relates to experienced players, it's optional. I don't shield in battles unless the situation (such as cheating foes) calls for it. I just do the regular stack and attack. This is something most experienced players do as well making the need for shield meaningless hence the lack of a need for Tower.
So, again, it just depends. I've trained on all my wizards with plenty of training points still left over with nothing to use them on. I just rather be prepared than be doomed.
I will suggest that you at least explore methods of increasing your resistances however. The game gets much harder and enemies will pierce easily through that making it not matter; especially if they happen to land a critical on you.
Having Tower Shields is essential in case one gets pulled into a mob fight you weren't expecting.
Yes, swapping out cards on your deck tailored for each boss is a GREAT tactic. However with my memory problems I'd forget what I needed for the base deck. So for me having a general deck that can handle ANY encounter is vital.
Kudos to you for being able to make it as far as you have with the strategy you've adopted.
Having Tower Shields is essential in case one gets pulled into a mob fight you weren't expecting.
Yes, swapping out cards on your deck tailored for each boss is a GREAT tactic. However with my memory problems I'd forget what I needed for the base deck. So for me having a general deck that can handle ANY encounter is vital.
Kudos to you for being able to make it as far as you have with the strategy you've adopted.
Steven Ghoststalker 130
Far from essential in my opinion. I've played storm, life, and death in every world, and all other schools through at least CL without ever shielding mobs, including the original "hard" versions of AZ and Mirage.
If you are shielding yourself in mob fights, ever, you are doing something that's inefficient.
Why not just take them out quickly? And how useful is a tower against 2 or more enemies? You're taking off at most half the first tic of the first hit. A general mob deck is AoE, enchant, and a few stacking blades. That will take out 98% of mobs in a few rounds with no problem, and you shouldn't be down more than half health. Keep the deck small, hit sooner.
For those rare boss instances where you really need protection, weakness, plague, juju, school specific single or double shields, dispells etc are almost always better because you can target the enemy that's the biggest threat.
I love these points and I am grateful for the insight.
I did mention in my original post how useful tower shield is against balance and shadow enemies and I did mention to carry tower shields as treasure cards (which I realize may not always be easy due to cost in bazaar or from librarians).
I NEVER MEANT TO STATE THAT TOWER SHIELD WAS USELESS, IT'S NOT. PLEASE TRAIN TOWER SHIELD IF YOUR ARE FIGHTING SHADOW YOU WON'T REGRET IT
I just meant, mostly for veteran players or those who want a challenge, give it a try and don't worry about training it so early on in the game. (I never said don't train it at all, or to not carry treasure card versions* cough cough Torpzun26 I said that in my original post )
My message in this thread was for people to try more unique things with their wizards in terms of training different things besides the usual "train this school up to this ONLY" meta that's become quite bland for me personally even though it is effective.
Oh yes the resist issue is something I'm working on at the moment haha
I only get the 5% from my pet's "Spell Defy" RIP me right?
Unfortauntely I'm running with a fire exalted mastery amulet and gear that gives me both fire and life statistics, but no universal resist so for now it is what it is.
This will change as I have some lovely dual-stated gear at level 100
See you in the game!
(Oh yes, this method of not training tower shield is definitely not for beginners or for the faint of heart )
I play wizards from all seven schools and have tower shield on all of them. Six are level 130 and one level 125. I usually do not shield in pve, and if I do it is tower. All the double school shields take one pip or two if out of school. I would rather take a little damage and have those extra pips to hit faster. I do not use the elemental or spirit blades either, because of the use of pips, Unless I am in a fight with a major boss. With a regular blade, a sharp blade, item blade and a tc blade, I am ready to end the fight in less than five rounds. Of course, I do have the best gear in damage and resistance, I also carry a small deck mostly when I am questing. But I do use the double shields in PVP and tower. So you want to know if tower is important, to me it is, I have maybe 2 or three in deck, instead of all those double shields and am ready to face any school.
I love these points and I am grateful for the insight.
I did mention in my original post how useful tower shield is against balance and shadow enemies and I did mention to carry tower shields as treasure cards (which I realize may not always be easy due to cost in bazaar or from librarians).
I NEVER MEANT TO STATE THAT TOWER SHIELD WAS USELESS, IT'S NOT. PLEASE TRAIN TOWER SHIELD IF YOUR ARE FIGHTING SHADOW YOU WON'T REGRET IT
I just meant, mostly for veteran players or those who want a challenge, give it a try and don't worry about training it so early on in the game. (I never said don't train it at all, or to not carry treasure card versions* cough cough Torpzun26 I said that in my original post )
My message in this thread was for people to try more unique things with their wizards in terms of training different things besides the usual "train this school up to this ONLY" meta that's become quite bland for me personally even though it is effective.
Have fun!
- Noah SilverBlood
You're right, you didn't. My post wasn't about a false presumption that you said the thing you didn't say. If you want to put off training Tower Shield to do something completely out of the box, that's fine. The first arc doesn't really offer you enough training to points to train Death to Feint, Fire attacks, and Tower Shield all by the time you start reaching those really tanky bosses in Dragonspyre and the very end of Mooshu. (And that's as a Life wizard that gets Sprite and Satyr for free; you have even less to work with if you're, say, a Storm that wants to do this for whatever reason.) Like others have mentioned, the blade-up-and-kill method is so good that you will oftentimes simply not have to use shields at all. My post was about how Tower Shield's versatility can still be useful even against bosses that you can use a school-specific shield against, if you find yourself in that situation. That even when school-specific shields can be used, Tower Shield isn't necessarily worse. That there's more than just four instances in which Tower Shield is useful.
You're right, you didn't. My post wasn't about a false presumption that you said the thing you didn't say. If you want to put off training Tower Shield to do something completely out of the box, that's fine. The first arc doesn't really offer you enough training to points to train Death to Feint, Fire attacks, and Tower Shield all by the time you start reaching those really tanky bosses in Dragonspyre and the very end of Mooshu. (And that's as a Life wizard that gets Sprite and Satyr for free; you have even less to work with if you're, say, a Storm that wants to do this for whatever reason.) Like others have mentioned, the blade-up-and-kill method is so good that you will oftentimes simply not have to use shields at all. My post was about how Tower Shield's versatility can still be useful even against bosses that you can use a school-specific shield against, if you find yourself in that situation. That even when school-specific shields can be used, Tower Shield isn't necessarily worse. That there's more than just four instances in which Tower Shield is useful.
I agree! The ones I listed were just the ones that stood out in terms of importance. Thank you for the great insight
Also, I am nearing 100 now and unless I am able to coordinate with some close friends on a viable set up without tower shield through all 3 dungeons of Darkmoor, I will most likely opt out to train tower shield at this point in time. Other variables will come into play whether I decide to team up random or if I am in the healer role (in which I will definitely be using healing gear as I have yet to discover a hybrid effective healing set).
my thing with the whole "train this to that, and the other things to those", is that for PvE, it's not needed (which is what you were stating). It seems really cookie cutter to me. I have 6 wizards on my paid account, and they're all the way up to or through mirage at the lowest level. I trained Stun Block on many of them, because 4 schools can stun you. Like Tower Shield, it CAN be really useful. The trap is, if you fight 2 (or more) monsters that can stun you, you can literally be doing nothing but stun block the whole fight. Getting back to tower shield, when I FIRST started using the Reshuffle method (and boy was it a nightmare before hand), one of the reasons it was recommended was because "you blade up and hit and dont waste time defending. If your attack is strong enough, it wont matter anyhow." So now, every wizard since then (which was on wizard 2 out of 6), it's now:
1) Get a pet with item blade 2) Get TC blades 3) Get sharpened blade 4) get jewel blades 5) stack the fewest blades needed and hit with the 7pip AoE and follow up with whatever single hit spell I need to
Using that method, on MANY boss fights, it's stack 4 or 5 blades and kill. I just dont worry about getting hit, but I usually bring a satyr and a radical/primordial just in case (except for my death). Depending on the fight in question, I'll do 2 or 3 blades, nuke the minion, blade the rest of the way (which is why my sideboard is nothing but blades for most fights). SOME fights I'l use the second of 2 school blades from the jewel (because I never use a single blade jewel. You're really wasting the slot otherwise). With that, I can use 2 blades, nuke the minion, then use 5 blades and nuke the boss (or however many I feel I need to use - I say 5 because that's how many I can stack regularly).
So during the first 2 dungeons of Darkmoor, my friends and I were able to complete it without my training of tower shield. I did take on the healing role as I had anticipated because my spell selection is most effective for such a role in our current group set-up.
While this is definitely not a huge achievement (as nearly every fight, dual shield spells could be easily substituted), after getting the Hungry Caterpillar Spell from Tatyana I did opt to train tower shield as for a healing role, it makes things much easier instead of digging for shields against a specific enemy - which I found to be critical in life or death situations.
While it would be interesting to take this "no training tower shield" experiment all the way to max level, I am unfamiliar with battles past the end of Mirage (I've never done Empyrea) and at this point in time I would prefer to place more focus on determining how effective I can make a Life Wizard with a Exalted Fire Mastery, using both spells as commonly as possible during the storyline. I will definitely be trying this experiment on a different wizard and see what the spare training points can influence another unique wizard build. Considering it for my death wizard.
(If you ever want to try a Life Wizard with Fire mastery and you have experience with Life Wizard gameplay, I highly recommend it as having a spammable 4 pip hit-all (Meteor Strike) and an effective minion killer without using my own school blades for a boss hit is a dream ).
This thread should also offer some unique insight when adjusting your play style and definitely take a look at all the replies to review the helpful do's, don'ts, and comments regarding tower shield that your fellow wizards have provided
- Noah SilverBlood
(Post about my current questing statistics (not my healing gear) as a 100 Life Wizard with a Fire Mastery for those that were curious)
96% Fire Damage 92% Life Damage 25% Universal Damage 13% Universal Resist 3% Universal Accuracy (I will be working on increasing accuracy at this point in time, not looking forward to fizzles) 5% Life Accuracy 22% Fire Critical Chance 31% Life Critical Chance 1% Universal Critical Block (Yep lol so far only once have I ever died due to a critical hit so I will also be working on increasing this) 4% Armor Piercing 21% Incoming Healing 33% Outgoing Healing 80% Power Pip Chance 3% Shadow Pip Bonus Chance
I agree! The ones I listed were just the ones that stood out in terms of importance. Thank you for the great insight
Also, I am nearing 100 now and unless I am able to coordinate with some close friends on a viable set up without tower shield through all 3 dungeons of Darkmoor, I will most likely opt out to train tower shield at this point in time. Other variables will come into play whether I decide to team up random or if I am in the healer role (in which I will definitely be using healing gear as I have yet to discover a hybrid effective healing set).
- Noah SilverBlood
Unless the bosses have had a massive nerf since i last ran it (possible, it's been a while) Tower is especially useless in Darkmoor, because on top of multiple attackers, cheat attacks, damage over time, etc, the enemies have high pierce. You're not reducing incoming enough to be worth the cast.
I agree! The ones I listed were just the ones that stood out in terms of importance. Thank you for the great insight
Also, I am nearing 100 now and unless I am able to coordinate with some close friends on a viable set up without tower shield through all 3 dungeons of Darkmoor, I will most likely opt out to train tower shield at this point in time. Other variables will come into play whether I decide to team up random or if I am in the healer role (in which I will definitely be using healing gear as I have yet to discover a hybrid effective healing set).
- Noah SilverBlood
I've never needed towers in Darkmoor (any of the 3 parts)...I don't think you'll be suddenly looking to train it
There are far too many multi-hits (and steals) to make them useful there imo. I really enjoyed healer/set-up role in Darkmoor - I hope you have a heap of fun and get your gear quickly
Oh, I didn't opt out to train tower shield because of Darkmoor. While it would be useful, our team did survive, as you have stated, well enough without it. I did it more so in anticipation for the upcoming Shadow bosses that I will eventually be encountering as I should be finished Khrysalis in about a week and a half at my current pace Thank you for the tips though!
- Noah SilverBlood
P.S. In terms of my gear, I did find a useful combination where I could raise my universal resist to 25% with a small decrease of my life damage from 92% to 87% Still working on the accuracy and critical block situation at this point in time, but the definite increase in resist will help. And I even got a friendly wizard to sneak me into the Arcanum to train the Link and Fire Dragon from Ignus Ferric! (Just don't tell the other scholars) Not sure that link will do much for me now, but Fire Dragon has been working as a great alternative higher pip hit-all - especially against Life enemies! And I do enjoy the confused comments from stranger wizards about my Life wizard using fire spells
Ice Wizards get tower shield for free so this may not apply to them. Maybe you'll feel something about this* 
Universal resist, 91% 
damage and 91% 
damage.
Death up to Feint, 
Balance Tri-Blades, 
8 Sun Enchantments and 3 
Star Auras, but not 
Shadow enemies
), Life Shield (-70%
), and Fire Shield (-80%
(Yep lol so far only once have I ever died due to a critical hit so I will also be working on increasing this)
Incoming Healing
Power Pip Chance