It all comes down to personal preference. If you want a more offensive build I would certainly max Umblo Blow and spend remaining points to max Swash Buckling and/or keep Rim Blow at least lvl 6. Guardian is nice but it consumes waaaay too many skill points and the fact you can’t use Gung Ho lv 5 with it makes the atk penality even more severe.
Just on a side note, try to max your skills rather than distribute your skill points too evenly among them (i.e. lv 12 Umbo Blow and lv 12 Rim Blow). This is because Rodel -> Murmi already have tons of low cd skills for their rotations so fewer, stronger skills are more valuable.
Shield Lob & Langort are not worth it, not even a single point.
High Guard lv 10 gives a lot of block, but it will take out a big lump of physical atk as I mentioned before. If you’re looking for an offensive build you really don’t want anymore than lv 1.
The cost-benefit for those skills per skill point is much better than Umblo Blow or Rim Blow, so they’re very good choices to max. Umbo Thrust and Butterfly also deal very good damage without need for High Guard but Butterfly’s AoE is rather lackluster.
For rodel I would max Targe Smash, Shield Bash, and put 9 points into Shield Shoving and 1 point into Slithering. Slithering no longer give strike debuff but it makes you immune to magic damage which is still great.[quote=“WinterFan, post:17, topic:364211”]
Oh and how much block is needed to be considered decent or good ?
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I think there might be a cap for 1100+ block because that’s when you should be hitting ~100% block rate in pvm (I’m not sure if it’s possible to have 100% block). Obviously the more block you have the better, but it’s going to be very hard hitting 600+ without Finestra or High Guard lv 10…
If you’re building offensive you shouldn’t care too much about block, tho, your shield is nothing but a big piece of metal to hit your enemies with.