Blocking with a shield decreases incoming ranged damage by an extra 15% and spell and shout magnitude by 40%. It also increases your disease resistance by 100% and poison resistance by 50%.
All NPCs block a significantly more amount of damage while blocking if you attack with normal attacks. Strategies to overcome this include: attacking them when not blocking, attacking their sides or back to avoid the areas that they are blocking, bullrush, parry and using power attacks.
Block effectiveness is multiplied by skill level, perks, effects that improve blocking (such as enchantments or potions), and whether you are using a weapon or shield.
At skill level 0 with no perks or effects to improve blocking, weapons block 30% of damage. This is increased by 20% of the attacker's weapon base damage (additive).
At skill level 0 with no perks or effects to improve blocking, shields block 45% of damage. This is increased by 20% of the shield's base armor rating (additive).
The amounts listed above are multiplied by things that improve blocking. For example taking the first perk to improve blocking changes those values to 60 and 78, respectively.
Damage blocked is increased by 0.3% * Block skill level.
Block damage resistance is capped at 75%. However, you can still benefit from going over the cap.
Blocking is 30% less effective against power attacks. For example, if you are at 100% damage blocked, then a power attack will have 70% of its damage blocked.
While at less than 30 stamina, blocking is 75% less effective. For example, if you are at the cap of 75%, then you will block 18% of damage instead.
The bash perks in the blocking tree now sport a new feature: elemental bashes. If your shield has a resistance enchantment, then your shield will also deal that type in damage. The strength is linear and based on the magnitude of the enchantment, e.g. a 40% fire resist shield will deal about twice as much damage as a 20% fire resist shield. Multiple resistances on a shield will cause the effect to work for each type.
Effective mass for shields is no longer affected by evasion/heavy armor perks. Instead, their weight is reduced by 75% by the "Strong Grip" perk. They also also excluded from casting penalties of light/heavy armor. Heavy shields no longer impose a penalty for not having the "Conditioning" perk.
Mass calculation from shield weight is still the same and it still counts towards mage armor perk weight thresholds.
Shields now have different effects based on if they are light or heavy, with some of the left side perks providing different benefits when blocking a hit.
Experienced Blocking perk: after blocking a melee hit with a light shield, you gain 20% 1H power attack cost reduction for 3 seconds. Melee attacker hitting a blocked heavy shield loses 15% melee damage for 3 seconds.
Defensive Stance perk: melee attacker hitting a blocked light shield loses 100 armor rating for 3 seconds. After blocking a melee or ranged hit with a heavy shield, you gain 20% movement speed for 3 seconds.
Elemental Protection perk: after blocking a melee hit with a light shield, you gain 10% attack speed for 3 seconds. After blocking a power attack with a heavy shield, stagger the attacker.
Effects of the above do not stack, they get refreshed.
0