I had an enchanted sword. I then bought two shields: one with enchanted and one without. I made sure they had identical stats. I went to a training dummy and compared damage, and then did the math to determine the exact percentage differences.
I did this 4-6 weeks ago and tested enchanted and vicious. I confirmed that these perks did not stack. I then spoke to others who tested it as well, and we all agreed that sword and shield perks did not stack in general. So the meta was to make sure you had different perks on your shield than you did your sword, so you didn’t duplicate perks.
I recently saw a post in reddit claiming enchanted now stacked, so I tested it again. I confirmed that enchanted and vicious DO stack now. So something in the past 6 weeks changed that. It’s not in the patch notes, and I know the devs have been tweaking sword and shield, so I’m leaning towards it being an unintentional bug that they will fix in the future. If they don’t, this is a huge buff to sword and shield.
Regardless of when it came in, it’s not a big deal, sword damage isn’t what’s holding it back from being used more in PvP for DMG, it’s crappy weapon perks on gear and less utility compared to GA/Hammer/Void/IG.
Thank you for responding coherently and rationally. I know personally that communication via media like this can be distorted.
My understanding from everyone I ever asked is that in the past they did not stack. That’s certainly far from hard evidence. However, it does provide anecdotal evidence.
I may try this myself with other weapons to help determine loadouts and the like.
If you have the shield and sword aktiv in your hand the should stack, why not ? Its normal, if you use the other habd you just get the sword perks and not the shield.
This won’t apply to other weapons. If you use a weapon other than a sword, then you won’t get any benefits from your shield whatsoever. This issue is just about shield and sword perks stacking.
When you’re using two other weapons, like a great axe and warhammer at the same time, for example, only the weapon you’re currently wielding at that moment will have its perks applied to you. The secondary weapon you’re using (and not wielding), will not have any perks applied to you, only its attributes (str, con, etc.)
FWIW I haven’t been playing the game recently but I tested this over a month ago and the perks did stack as long as they were different. The easiest to test this on was with something like keenly empowered on sword and keenly jagged on shield. You can clearly see that when you crit you both get the empowered buff and the enemy takes bleed damage.
I think it always worked this way, unless they changed it since I played.
This is not what I’m talking about. The term “stacking” usually implies the same perk. If you’re talking about different perks, they don’t need to stack because they are different. I’m talking about the same perks now stack. Enchanted on shield and enchanted on sword, for example. Same perks did not stack previously, but now they do on shield/sword.
Yep. And now, you can have enchanted on sword and enchanted on shield, and both enchanted’s stack! So find the 3 best perks and use the same perks on both shield and sword.
Yes that’s correct. Keen doesn’t stack with itself, and Keenly Empowered doesn’t stack with itself. Example: sword has keen and shield has keen (does not stack to give you double keen.) Same goes for keenly empowered (does not stack to give you double keenly empowered)
