History Main / ShieldsAreUseless

An importan Aversion to this trope is the SpecialEffectShield, which has some other useful effects beyond (not) blocking attacks.

* ''VideoGame/DemonsSouls'' and ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' players typically end up falling into this mentality sooner or later, as well as ArmorIsUseless. Players will typically only equip heavy armour and actually use a shield for blocking when they first start playing the series, as a form of SkillGateCharacter. Once they get used to the mechanics, players will typically come to value mobility over defense, and discard both their heavy armour and shield in favour of light ([[FullFrontalAssault or sometimes no]]) armour to maintain full mobility and StatSticks that are glued to the player's back 100% of the time and never actually used, ending up with a GlassCannon that never gets hit rather than a MightyGlacier that can block or tank many hits.

** The other Three Heroes believe that "Shielders are useless" in a fight based off of videogames they have played. And are later caught flat-footed when Naofumi; the "Useless" Shield Hero was able to solo a later Boss Fight that the three of them were struggling for hours with that they all think he somehow cheated (clearly they've never played [=MMOs=] or spent any amount of time with any [[StoneWall Tank]] [[LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe Players]]).
** The majority of Melromarc feels this way about the Shield Hero, due to the beliefs of [[CorruptChurch The Three Heroes Church]]: which preaches that The Sword, Spear, and Bow Heroes are all [[GodInHumanForm Constantly-Reincarnating Gods]] meant to save them from [[TheAntiChrist "The Devil Of The Shield"]]. It is only some time after the other Three Heroes managed to constantly mess things up that [[HeroWithBadPublicity Naofumi]] manages to undo that the public begins to doubt the claims made by the Church, [[spoiler:resulting in The Church and their Pope to try a coup d'etat to overthrow the nations' Royal Family and replace it with their rule, while also killing the "Three False Heroes" and "The Devil of The Shield" to prove their faith is true.]]

** Roman infantry, both the lightly armed ''velites'' skirmishers and the more heavily armed and armored legionaires, carried the ''pilum'', a javelin with an extremely long shank behind the head [[ArmorPiercingAttack designed specifically to penetrate shields]] and then break or bend and be impossible to remove in short order, thus either killing the shield-wielding enemy if he didn't keep the shield sufficiently distant from his body, wound the shield-bearing arm if the pilum hit in the right place, or simply make the shield unbalanced through their own weight, thus forcing the enemy to [[MortonsFork either use an extremely unbalanced shield that is now more an encumbrance than a protection or throw it away outright]]. The ''velites'' carried many ''pilae'' and used them in their HitAndRunTactics to harass the enemy infantry during the approach, while the legionaires carried only two and would throw them shortly before the infantry collided, ruining the enemy formation right before contact with no time to reorganize.