This week's tip is the fourth and final Tip of our four-part series discussing how to properly use stances and formations for various types of units. This week we will look at Shield Wall Formation. Shield Wall is basically a second stance for Gondor Soldiers and Uruk Swordsmen, and it's very important to know how to use it properly.
About a year ago, most players placed their units in Shield Wall whenever they weren't moving, wrongly believing that it's always best to be in Shield Wall. After all, it increases your armor, and the only thing it reduces is your speed, right? Not so. Shield Wall provides +33% Armor and -40% Speed, but what people did not realize is that it also causes -20% Damage as well. EA never mentioned this on their tooltip for the ability, so most people never knew. Now that 2.02 has corrected the bonuses on the tooltips, many people have figured out that it's not always good to be in Shield Wall. The armor bonus does offset the damage penalty, but not by much.
So when to use Shield Wall? The answer is simple: whenever you would normally be in Defensive Stance. It's stupid to attack a building in Aggressive Stance to maximize damage, but then put your soldiers in Shield Wall: you're just canceling the benefits of Aggressive Stance. And yet some players still do this all the time, using Shield Wall to make their units weaker. Don't be that player.
There is one main exception to the rule that you should use Shield Wall when you're in Defensive Stance: when your units are buffed with two modifiers (of any type). If your units have two modifiers and Defensive Stance (or one modifier in 2.01), then they already have +300% Armor, the maximum value. You can't increase your armor by using Shield Wall; all that you'll accomplish is lowering your damage by 20%. So when your units have two buffs, just leave your units in Defensive Stance and Line Formation.
Defensive Stance vs. Shield Wall
Defensive Stance increases your armor just as much as Shield Wall does, but has less of a Damage penalty, and of course no cost to speed.
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