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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Goumindong" data-source="post: 4399219" data-attributes="member: 70874">Why would you spend a feat to lose the +1 damage, power attack, Bracer's of Might Striking, no free hand, etc when you can spend the feat to do something entirely different? Like, Durable, any of the +defensive feats, back to the wall, racial feats, toughness, skill training, a multiclass feat, jack of all trades, ritual casting, quickdraw, skill focus, back to the wall, blood thirst, combat anticipation, Fleet Footed...The purpose of a great weapon fighter is to get enemies to attack you and not your allies. A shield defeats this purpose. It does so in two ways.1. It reduces your damage on OAs and combat Challenge by a significant amount.2. It reduces their likelyhood to miss you, which decreases the benefit they have for attacking you.So the shield reduces an enemies incentive to attack you, and decreases their disincentive to ignore you. After thinking about it, it looks like the only reason a fighter should have a shield is for the daily abilities they grant and the few powers that use a shield.(which are quite strong and valid reasons, but "no benefit" is not so simple with the bastard sword)The shield is then more tactical and leadery, letting you push and possibly negating a few important hits while the two handed weapon is more defenderish and consistent. If you don't think preventing attacks against your friends is worth +2 AC and Reflex then you should not be playing a defender, you should be playing a striker.This seems ironic, because the great weapon defender does more dpr. In the end, it just depends on your party config. If you don't have a controller, a shield fighter gets better, if your leader is a cleric, a shield fighter gets better. If your wizard focuses more on zones or damage rather than forced movement and specific enemy targeting the shield fighter gets better. If you already have a punishing defender a shield fighter gets better.So if your party looks like:Cleric, Paladin, Fighter, Ranger, Blast Wizard then the fighter is probably better off as a shield fighter. If your party looks like:Warlord, Fighter, Wizard, Warlock, Ranger then the fighter is probably better off as a great weapon fighter.</blockquote>

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