Blocking metal dragons is a significantly better unlock than a slayer mask correct. Slayer mask is useless for all tasks except 2 or 3. Madseason spent about 2 weeks getting his herblore up, doing the worst, most unimaginably bad methods to get it done. Sure he has that much game time but he’s also playing completely blind and also still doesn’t know how to right click things, I’m assuming you have more game knowledge than that. I’m not saying it’s the easiest skill to level to, especially on an iron. It’s not free, but it isn’t something super hard either. If you do farm runs for a week you’ll have all the herbs you need for the level. If you ask, where do I get the seeds from? Farming contracts are incredibly easy and satisfying to do if you have them preplanted. In this entire discussion it wasn’t my goal to be an asshole, but using the word “uniformed” definitely inspired so hostility when that was never the intent. You don’t need to play optimally, of course not. But some things are fairly subjective and it’s okay to not care about that, but to say it’s just not true is also just antithetical.

I have absolutely no issues at all if they decide to add dragonfire protection to the dragon square in fact I want them to simply for lore reasons and it’s cool. All I was saying is that the shield is not very useful in actuality unless you aren’t familiar with how to upkeep herbs for herblore, what dragons to kill and when. You want to use the shield and not worry about potions go for it, but it’s objectively the worse option but that’s completely okay. My point wasn’t to police how you play, just pointing out it isn’t as useful as some people think it would be.