Anyone who actually uses shields?

[Pipinghot]

@ceu1601

You want them to have shields, as long as enemies don’t have weapons with “shieldbreaker” attribute to bypass shield, since increased survivability of thralls is a good thing. Especially for corrupted authority builds, where thralls share your damage taken and you boost damage they inflict.

Even if it’s random hit/miss mechanic, any chance is better, than 0% chance.

Unfortunately, you really don’t want your thralls to have shields. It feels like it’s a good idea but it doesn’t work out in practice.

Check out Xevyr’s Guide to Thralls to learn more.

Xevyr's guide to Thralls

Introduction This guide aims to go through some of the more useful information related to the thrall system as it is currently implemented in the game. (“currently” being the Age of War - so be aware that some of these might have changed since if you’re reading this in the future). It contains information that can be useful to new players and seasoned veterans alike. First of all… What are Thralls? In Conan Exiles you can “recruit” certain NPCs to be your followers. This includes non-human p…

@Xevyr

Many people give their thralls shields and while it can be quite annoying to us when NPC defenders raise a shield in our face… it’s less effective against the NPCs when our thrall raises shields at them

Given that they will mainly raise their shields at random times when that Offhand combo is selected, the results can be unpredictable.

Best case scenario our thrall accidentally blocks a hit, during which he won’t attack… so we haven’t done anything except needlessly prolonged the fight (unless we as a player manage to capitalize on it, but it’s going to be rare and very luck based).
Other scenarios include your thrall wasting a bunch of time raising the shield… only to lower it exactly as they take a hit to the face… having done nothing and even wasting their potential attack… or worse… sometimes shield-wielding thralls actually bug out and remain in a passive position until attacked or knocked back.

Conclusion: shields are not for thralls.