Exactly, which is why i think most would agree Dumbledore is such a deadly force, even just soley relying on transfiguration.

It's really so hard to find any definent answers, since we have so very few definent facts from cannon. Hopefully we'll all atleast inspire some ideas for future battle scenes here

 

I look at it this way. Imagine either a tennis ball cannon or an automatic pitching machine if you play baseball. Now imagine some of those balls are randomly filled with explosives. You have a choice between an unlimited supply of midevil shields or trying to dodge them. The shield will hold up for a couple of hits and might give you time to fight back, or you can try to move out of the way and fire on the fly. Once the ball/spell is in the air you're screwed if you haven't already started doing one or the other.

The problem with shielding yourself is that you don't know what the next spell will be. Will it be a stupefy that bounces off lightly, or blasting curse that shatters your shield and gives you a face full of pain? The shield is getting weak, do you switch to the next one (that might be useless against some curses anyway) or hope it holds and fire your own curse? When dodging, your erratic movements can interfere with your curses causing them to fail or just plain miss the target entirely.

If you have speed, keen eye, and endurance, dodging is probably the best bet. If you have good instincts, a steady hand, and raw strength, standing with the shields is the best tactic. Or if you've got balls of steel, unquestionable reflexes, and vast knowledge, you can fight like Voldemort and Dumbledore, redirecting the curses mid air and bringing other things into their paths.

Neither one of the traditional approaches is necessarily better. A slow clumsy man can't dodge and a weak man will break against stronger spells. The important thing is to recognise your particular skills and train those until they are automatic reactions.

Speculating wildly here, the reason most wizards have problems is arrogance. They assume they are stronger than their opponents and so train to outlast them. When Aurors or DE's show up in a group, they're screwed. When seeker-boy faced off against the DE's and Voldemort in the Graveyard, he was at least smart enough to know "they will overpower me, I need to get the fuck out of here!" The graveyard scene BTW was a great example of canon spell dodging. Ok Volde's crucio's and imperio's got through, but he dodged the AK's and everything the other DE's sent his way.

IMHO Spell Dodging; possible but not always the best choice.

 

Dodging is actually much harder than most people make it out to be. People in my old martial arts class would get creamed by more skilled attackers when they tried to dodge since they leave themselves open for a fast follow up attack. Me and a friend of mine spent many sparring sessions just dodging our opponents in order to get the movements right. If one isn't innately adept at sport and such, which me and my friend are probably are, then against a stronger opponent trying to dodge will and up royally fucking themselves over. Having speed and endurance isn't enough for evading skilled attackers, experience is more important since knowing how to position the body before, during and after evading is crucial to survive a following attack and getting the opportunity to counterattacking.

 

There's a lot of difference in dodging someone trying to kick your ass and dodging a beam of light that travels slow enough for you to move out of the way, if you have good reflexes. Keep in mind that it doesnt take much to move out of the way of a spell, since most spells aren't 'large'.

 

In my opinion as the spell is being spoken the witch/wizard has about a 1-2 second interval to either shield or dodge. If the wizard/witch is skilled in Legilimency then they may be able to know what their opponent is about to cast. This allows them to know how to properly defend against an opponent whether that means shielding from a random spell or dodging the killing curse. As in almost every competition being able to read your opponent is the key to victory I think the same applies to a magical duel.

 

Ignoring for a moment whether or not it's possible to dodge a spell, wouldn't it be a good idea not to be a stationary target to begin with? I mean, who the hell would just stand there and wait for a spell to come at him? Especially if you're being attacked by multiple opponents. After all, death eaters don't attack alone unless they clearly have the upper hand (disguised, invisible, etc). How are you going to shield against everyone at once, particularly if they're using the Unforgivables or high-powered spells to break your shield?

A much better idea would be to never stop moving in the first place. Always be a moving target. I'd rather be running around firing wide-area spells, that don't need 100% accuracy, at the opponent's feet. Something explosive...

Unless you and your opponent are at opposite ends of an official dueling platform for a sanctioned duel, you'd have to be a real twat to just stand there and wait for something 'magically pernicious' to come at you (unless that's part of your strategy, oi). Dueling is dueling but fighting death eaters is war; two very different things.

Of course, if you're Dumbledore you A: are skilled and powerful enough that, perhaps, you can afford to stand still for anything less than the Cruciatus or the Killing Curse and, B: are too old to be dodging and running anyway (he ain't Yoda).

Of course if this were an FPS, Harry could circle-strafe.

 

That's not really always an option. Death Eaters aren't like an army; they're a guerilla force, that focuses on ambushes and surprise attacks, and would be less likely to allow for the freedom of movement that you speak of--they're not really incompetent, and even the above average duelist would be hard pressed to succesfully counter in this sort of environment.

True, spells that create explosions like that would probably be better, but I get the idea from somewhere that a great duelist would be able to fire off spells incredibly quickly, much faster than you could possibly dodge. It's not like it's turn-based format, people, everyone involved SHOULD keep firing until one side's not moving anymore!

 

Something no one seems to have taken into account is the natural mindset of the human brain when thrust into a course of danger. How many of you have actually been in a fight? Sparring, street, bar, club, garage, friendly rough housing, schoolyard? Any of those? Where the levels of danger vary through and through.

I've been through sparring sessions, a few controlled fights and a couple not so friendly ones. The mentality changes from condition to condition. The skill and knowledge of fighting isn't even needed for dodging. It's a natural, basic, human reaction. Something comes your way, anything that your mind percieves that would cause you harm, and your instincts kick in and you move.

Most of you are looking at dodging as more of a preemptive, planned action. That a character has mapped out the exact action in their mind. They haven't, nobody does. They may have a small inkling in the back of their head that they may have to dodge something, but without the actual blow, there's no way to ensure how you could react. Dodging is more of a spur of the moment reaction that is simply followed through. The only difference is whether the person dodging has some skill in possible hand to hand, martial arts or even gymnastics. That's when dodging can swiftly change from just a reaction to a more controlled, evasive action.

You don't have to be a big time martial artist to dodge though. Have any of you ever quickly stepped out of the way before you ran into somebody when you weren't paying attention? You just dodged slamming into someone. Did you plan it? No, you acted on instinct and your body moved itself out of harms way without you really in control. It's all the same principle.

Dodging to the side is faster, quicker, and simpler than trying to erect a shield. It's the most surefire way that whatever is speeding towards you will cause no harm whatsoever, granted if you can get out of the way in time. What doesn't touch you, can't hurt you.

It really depends on the situation though, shields work for some action sequences, dodging for others.

If it's regards to HP action scenes then it's something you've got to take into account. Dumbledore sidestepping one of the AK spells is a bit of proof of moving on instincts. He summoned a statue I believe to protect Harry from one, and merely moved out of the way of the one cast at him.

It boils down to the characters in the scene. Anybody can fling their bodies to the side to escape harm. Anybody. You may not be entirely successful, but you still did it.

Use dodging as a desperation act, and shields for more controlled aspects of a fight. You can create a realistic fight scene using both. Leaving yourself to be limited to simple shields makes a fight stagnate, leaves your characters standing around like chopping blocks.

Honestly, I don't see any way you can really provide a good enough reason to even have Dodging vs. Shields. If anything, it should be Dodging and Shields, because both are essential in any HP duel you create.

 

Jump-strafing: Another power the Dark Lord knows not.

 

I know I've seen at least one fic where Harry uses the equivalent of rocket-jumping to move around. Kind of goofy, but fun. I also like the variations on summoning yourself to a wall to get a sort of Spiderman web-swinging effect.

I think one big variable here is just how precise wand movements have to be. We get the Wingardium Leviosa swish-and-flick repeated over and over again, but a lot of the other spells we only know by incantation. Do we even know for sure that there is some particular wand movement associated with Avada Kedavra? Also, it would be reasonable for combat spells to be designed with a little bit of "play" in the wand movements, where the first x number of steps have to be very precise, but the final pointing motion can be wherever you want. Maybe they have kids learn the levitation spell first because it demands the most precision, and they really want to train kids to be precise.

Also, in the combat spell system that exists only in my head, I think the reasonable way to handle tracking would be to make it an add on to spells, but only compatible with spells below a certain power level. So on the offensive you can choose between a tickling jinx that will follow your opponent around or some sort of blasting spell that will take a big chunk out of their shield. Gives sort of a rock-paper-scissors element to the dodge/shield decision.

 

I remember reading a fic where Flitwick was teaching Harry how to duel, and he taught him along the lines of all professional duelists have worked out strings of spells, where the wand movements flow into each other, for speed of casting. He himself could get out like 12 spells in 20 seconds, but it was a specific 12 spells. Obviously such strings would be designed to compliment each other, first a spell that incapacitates in case they fail to shield, next a couple of good anti-shield spells, then a moderately high power incapacitation spell, followed by a few minor hexes to distract them before another incapacitation spell. And so forth.

 

Would you happen to remember this fic? It seems like it could be amusing. I know Bungle in the Jungle has that sort of thing (I can't remember the right word) but I don't think I've come across it too often.

On the Dodge/Shield note, I'd say its possible to dodge some curses because if you can summon a rock/gold centaur into the path of the curse then you have sufficient time to dodge. Of course you'd need insanely quick reflexes to do it, but I do think its possible.

Aekiel

 

What I think Mordecai means is Harry Potter and Ancardia. One of Shezza's fics. Find at his Yahoo! Group - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Shezzaswork/

 

Thats the one I was thinking of crazy, though I wouldn't for the life of me have been able to actually remember what it was called.

 

The Phrase your thinking of is 'SpellChaining'. (Or sometimes 'ChainCasting')

I've seen it used a handful of times, usually to good effect. it's actually one of the less used 'Fannon' Concepts as it's difficult for most mediocre authors to either wrap their minds around, or else write. As shown in Jberns works however, it's a most effective plot device in the hands of a skilled writer.

 

I wouldn't go into detail how you could easily get creamed if you tried to dodge a very fast spell or shield against one which could overpower you. Instead, I'd like to point out that it's almost impossible to choose only from either if your enemy's skill and power is at par with either Voldemort or Dumbledore. Dodging and shielding wouldn't really work quite nicely alone against such foes. First off both could fire spells at you without even a single twitch of their lips. How are you supposed to know which shield to use? Of course if you dodge then you just gave them an opening unless you are well on your way of casting a spell while dodging. The point is that you have to have other skills aside from shielding and dodging to win in a duel.

It was mentioned that between the Voldemort and Dumbledore's duel only one spell was dodged and it was an AK. Now how do you suppose those two were able to shield against the other's spells even if both their lips were sealed? I'd like to assume that while they were dueling in the physical plane they were also dueling in the mental plane. They both were doing legilimency/occlumency against the other to see/anticipate the next spell to know which shield to use or which spell to dodge. With such skills at their disposal it is no wonder they could pull off such a superb duel.

Now when it comes to snot-nosed brats its a different story. Draco takes approximately 1-2 seconds to incant a spell. Harry therefore would have all the time in the world to decide either to shield or dodge. If he shielded then that leaves Draco another chance to cast another spell unless Harry starts moving immediately after he shields the spell. If Harry dodged then Draco still gets another chance to cast a spell. If Harry, after dodging, doesn't get himself together then he'd have to dodge/shield another spell without the opportunity of firing back. This could easily lead him to a state of mind where he only thinks of dodging/shielding spells. In the end he gets exhausted and makes a wrong move. Then he's dead. [Pretty much what happens to me when I play badminton and am pitted against a player who hits harder and is more cunning than me. In the end my mindset is adjusted just to get the ball back to his court without any sense of placing/strategy. I make a wrong move and WHAM! The opponent scores.]

Given the two situations I mentioned above, it is bad, therefore, to think that only dodging/shielding are the only skills to argue about or choose from when dueling. Those are just the basic stuff you'd need if you want to become champion in Lockhart's little dueling club.

 

I think that dodging is much better. That is, with one very important condition.

Before talking about this condition, I will establish that it's a fact that wizards have the ability to alter spells. Now, in the magical world spells were created by someone, since obviously the language of magic isn't Latin (after all, Latin has changed throughout time). This would mean that they can be altered too.

Now, by altering, I don't mean changing the effect of a spell. What I mean is changing the spell's appearance (for basic spellcasting), speed (for higher level spellcasting), and incantations (for the most powerful spellcasting). Of course, there are other ways you can tinker with spells, but the only one needed to be considered for this debate is appearance, as you'll soon see why.

Let's now go to my condition, which is ease of use. This basically means that a relatively powerful wizard can change the appearance of a spell without any noticeable energy drain before the spell is used, meaning that the ability to alter spells could be used in a fight. Look at the clause "before the spell is used." This means that the ability to alter spells would most likely be used through an enchantment, runic ritual carved in a fortress, or expensive magical device (realistically powered by the wizard's own magic) prepared before the fight; what wouldn't work would be for this ability to be a spell itself.

So what does this all mean? So what, if I can change the appearance of a spell in battle? The answer to this is that you can change any spell's colors to whatever you want (I'd suggest black, as it seems the most natural color in our universe). So an opponent who's shielding finds out that when that unknown black spell you just sent out hits his shield, it smashes through it and hits him, instantly killing him (btw, the spell's Avada Kedavra). It would therefore be better to dodge.

You can say to this, "You can't alter the Unforgivables!" My response is that then you can use spells specifically aimed to destroy shields and put shielders at a disadvantage.

You could also say, "But what if you can only alter lower-level curses? Shield-surpassing spells are all high level." My response would be that you'd alter all low-level spells to look like the killing curse and force people to dodge.

Some people may also say that there's very little canon basis for my idea; after all, Dumbledore and Voldemort didn't to it. But this argument falls because of the fact that all canon battles have been spontaneous - there have been no fights where it was possible to put in a spell-altering object before the battle.

To the argument against this stating that there was a preplanned attack when Hogwarts was invaded in HBP, my nifty little counter is that HBP isn't canon at all.

And if you want to make a post-HBP story (although I couldn't imagine anybody willing to do that), just have Harry discover an ancient device crafted by Godric Gryfindor that enables spellcasting in duels - a skill long thought lost in the wizarding world. That's actually a pretty neat plot bunny.

 

I belive your should combine shields and dodging. If you are more powerful then your opponent then you can use a shield as it should hold against anything your opponent casts as long as it is the correct shield, if you are less powerful then you should try to dodge as even if you cast the correct shield so is it possible for the spell to be powerful enough to break thru the shield...

 

From reading all this it seems that everyone have a diffirent oppinion.

I myself would probebly go with conjuring stone or something simular to shield with. A basic protego can be overpowerd, and sure a block of stone can spray little pebbles, but if you dodge your accuracy will go down alot. The one who stands still might be a easier target, but while you move around you would have a harder time since you would have to:
1. move around, this takes some of your concentration.
2. check what the opponent are doing
3. casting spells yourself.

You devide up your mind abit to much to be able to react as fast as the one who stands still. Although this is my answer to those who say you should be moving all the time.

If you just sidestep a spell and just move the minimal, that would probebly work. It's just you would have to watch out for those spells that have an area of effect thing.

Well, I think I have a diffirent of oppinion even with myself. Probebly because we haven't gotten enough of info from canon to justify either. It's just to me, conjuring big marble slabs looks cooler then jumping around like Jackie Chan.

 

I think it has a lot to do with personal style. If one had enormous reserves of magical power behind them, it would probably be easier to simply park oneself behind a good, solid shield and dish out the most powerful shit you can. However, some (or rather, most) people don't have those enormous reservoirs to draw from. In that case, it might be better to conserve power by dodging (while keeping movement to a minimum) and waiting for your foe to slip up and leave an opening.

You should also consider the difference between dueling and fighting. I would define dueling as two people facing off on relatively even grounds and not too far from each other. In cases such as this, your foe's attention is focused on you, and they might be able to anticipate a dodge. They are also using more creative spellwork, in which case dodging might not be enough. Therefore, a shield would be more prudent, assuming you can maintain it. However, in fights, which I would define as little more than brawls or riots, your best bet would probably be to pick one good, solid offensive spell like the Reductor or the Stunner and fire it left and right while dodging as best you can. With so many people in the mix, shielding everything would distract you from the task at hand.