underpowered Whirlwind Shield warrior? erm

[TheExorcist]

Good news? as usual still can beat Garm (all Frenzy - mobs and boss with Old Battle Rage skill) at trial 139
bad news? how am i goin to kill Kara and her minions at trial 140. Any ideas or recommendation??
as if Whirlwind SW final destination is trial 139? haha

[Turgeon]

Dunno how you beat 5hat damn darm. But yes its probably gonna be the last lvl with our defender!

[TheExorcist]

back to square one with the New LB?
Garm as usual at trial 139 (Whirlwind Shield warrior Scary Movie/ Final destination)
have not try Kara yet at: 140 (should i??)

[Benedicto]

Without Deadly Throw, it is hard to manage Kara's minions. I only cast the companion stun to the minions if their buff is going to be the defense buff to Kara, but when they start to increase in numbers, the boss fight is getting longer and it's really annoying.

[TheExorcist]

Benedicto: You're right
i'm happily conclude: the most difficult boss for a Battle rage Whirlwind Shield warrior without Deadly Throw at higher trials 140 and above? is: The one and only: Kara the "MF" and "A-Hole"

[TheExorcist]

Whirlwind shield warrior this new season?
as usual trial 139?

at least I'm happy at the warrior LB (for heaven's sake for awhile )

I feel much honored if any whirlwind shield warrior friend can beat Kara at Trial 140.

Upcoming Gold ANB? erm. I'm all out for the only thing that for years I'm not a bloody-hell a bad player ( i think so?). wats that? well it's none other than my lovable:

"whirlwind shield warrior"

Addition:

Benedicto dear friend:

I try DT skill

But but err without Battle rage : DT is NEARLY USELESS for a Whirlwind Shield Warrior at trial 140 when regard to 'timing": always less than 3 min somethin when usin Shield slam BOM, and much worse (less than 2 min) when usin DT BOM. O dear!!

[Turgeon]

Good luck with kara their minion are so annoying

[TheExorcist]

Turgeon: later when you have free time: why not you try to beat Kara at Trial 140. Try to think of somethin will ya?: shockwave? ITZ? Lightning Reflexes Templar build? etc etc. I just don't have the answer/ ideas anymore

[Turgeon]

TheExorcist im currently trying something by replacing BR by charge for the 2000 crit rating ill say it if it work for kara

[Kardinaal]

Relatively new at eternium, and played a few Anb as a “traditional” ww shield warrior, I find it lacking. As trials get higher, dps on mob fase goes down steeply due to the low defensive options. It’s hard to keep pulling the big mobs you need to make shield smash shine. And you still need a secondary damage source for bosses. traditionally DT but face it, that’s not a huge boost since half the damage you see is coming from DT procs from SB, so the damage done by activating the skill isn’t that much.

I ended up getting stuck at trial 109 of all places last anb, not being able to pull enough mobs to clear fast enough to have time for Kara. Tried a lot of stuff changing gems, swapping out DT for other skills,.. nothing worked.


So I took a good look at my shield warrior. Most damage obviously comes from shield slam, so that is the core of the shield warrior. Sword and board, tough as nails, 4 piece defender bonus, enough block rating for over 90% block. That is the part of the build that’s the core of the shield warrior.

The traditional shield warrior adds the 6 piece defender bonus, shield block and DT, but for me that’s already one possible extension. It adds DT procs, and a power boost (half your block rating). But it also takes up at least one skill slot for shield block, and a second for DT seems to be the popular choice (although devastate offers bigger damage at the same cooldown). This leaves the build with very little options for a defensive buff skill, limiting the pulling power at higher trials and thus not getting the best returns from shield slam/DT procs.

So looking at the core build, what else can we add besides the above? 4 defender 2 warlord gives a nice synergy: casting charge or leap also casts battle rage from warlord means you get 4 heal procs from the 2 piece defender bonus for using charge or leap, and you get battle rage on the much lower cooldown of jump/charge. Both also offer a solid defensive buff, so this seems to add a decent scalable defense (damage reduction and heals relative to your health). We also have 2 active skill slots left to play with, and we still need a secondary source of damage for bosses.

There are a few possibilities to try out, but here is what I am testing. I call it:


The bloody shield
————————

Skills:

rending slash
jump / shockwave / whirlwind
sword and board / tough as nails / endurance


gear:

viscera / encrypted shield
2 warlord 4 defender
belt of the whirling storm
integralas mantle
BoM: either shield smash or rending slash (haven’t unlocked it so cannot test it)
talisman of storms / brooch of the purifying flames



stats:

big health pool (heals scale off health)
enough life on hit for encrypted shield bubble effect to stay on all the time
enough ar for 5 second jump (BR uptime) or 3s (damage reduction on all the time)
enough block rating for over 90% block
armour stat on shield (the higher the better, it’s your shield’s damage stat)
the rest would be power, crit rating/damage
no haste needed, only thing we use our weapon for is building bleed stacks


first impressions:

I made a poor man’s version of the build, it’s coming short on the damage front due to the fact I just crafted one piece of gear per slot, so needing more slots than absolutely necessary for the rest due to imperfect stats. I also still need to add sockets. Took it out for a spin at to 90. Mob fase was a breeze, nice mobility, pulled a huge mob and survived, shockwave and shield slam making quick work, at around 2,5 min in. Then Kara was a huge struggle and I barely managed to finish in 10 minutes. Shockwave did ok, but didn’t one hit the minions. Like I said before, damage is lacking as I wanted to get all stats up then add damage based stats. Better gear and further min-maxing will at least make me a decent warrior.


In depth:

*** Great survivability that scales ***

There are 2 components to the survivability model of this build:


1. Heals scaling off life pool

First there is the heal from shockwave. The ar used for getting a 4 second jump also gets you under 6 seconds for shockwave so you are constantly healing at 10% life per second.

Then there are the heals from the defender/warlord synergy. Per jump you generate 2 6% life procs from the defender 2 bonus. The warlord two bonus makes you also cast BR, so 4 in total. Couple that with a cooldown of 4 seconds on jump and you have non stop BR activation, and around 5% life per second heal.

So that’s healing at a rate of 15% per second of your max life value in total. This gives you direct control over your pulling power by adding life.


2. Incoming damage reduction

Both jump (50% for 3 seconds) and shockwave (2 stacks of 25%) offer straight up damage reduction, encrypted shield offers 10% when the shield is up (life on hit boosts the amount of “life” a single proc adds to the shield, shield takes 10% of incoming damage and looses life for it). So the more LoH you get on your build, the more damage the shield can absorbe per second.

How these sources all stack? No idea. There’s probably other sources of damage reduction like armour value, blocking maybe? I haven’t found any info how those work. Just going off more is better.


*** Bleed damage and shield smash damage ***

It’s a problem of physical or fire damage - which one to boost. In the above test I ran with both, an even split. But I’m starting to rethink that approach. With shield smash being mostly useful in the mob phase, and the hope shockwave can become something to seriously speed up boss killing, think I should have gone all out in fire damage. Shield smash would then still be powerful enough to take down a normal mob. In the Gear you can see an odd talisman that plays into this line of thinking already, and there is that fire enchant for your weapon. Both add a fire DoT effect for shockwave to shine. That fire damage % will boost both the dot effect as well as shockwave in mathematically potentially interesting ways, with a nice chance to double-crit tossed in. I’ll need some grinding to do the changes and get the fire enchant. It’s my hope


*** What’s not there and why ***

no haste, no secondary attack, no parry...

No parry, cause it interferes with block. That one’s easy.

No haste, because the only thing it would add would be faster buildup of rendering slash, and some life on hit increase (which doesn’t scale). The crits we need are from shield smash and skills, both are independent of haste.

So as a secondary skill, frenzy would add little to the build. And the haste debuff on cleave means less attacks, less blocking, less damage overall,

[Kardinaal]

Pressed post by accident, but most of the info is there...

It’s a big read, so thanks for sticking in there.

I have some questions I didn’t find the answer to on the forums:

1. how does damage reduction stack? Cause armour alone gets a whooping 95%... do I even notice the 10% from encrypted shield?
2. How does block work? Is haste involved? Does it give damage reduction?
3. How does the lightning ability on rylocks defender work? It’s the only useful replacement for encrypted shield (unless I loose the viscera and go full blackguard, but I don’t think I should sacrifice more damage for survivability)


Thanks for any insights you might have on the build and my questions,

Kardinaal

[Kardinaal]

Apparently I didn’t read every thread here... just learned from: https://forum.makingfun.com/forum/et...151#post194151 about critical block, which generate more shield slams... so my basic premisse of needing 90% block seems flawed, and more is better even without shield block/full defender set.

[TheExorcist]

Kardinal!!
any new suggestion etc on how to go further up with our shield warriors is most welcome
erm. I wonder why for ages it's like some sort of "a rule of law" for a defensive warrior to used 6/6 or the full Defensive set. IN GENERAL NOBODY CAN THINK OF ANYTHIN ELSE (including me ).

Just for argument sake:

Even a DW can used mix set say 4Fury/ 2 warlord vice versa. Not so for a defensive warrior. thus we are stuck since time immemorial with the full defender set!!!!. WHO MADE THIS RULE AND WHY?. I like to know. . (it seems ridiculous just one type of set and no other combination possible?? (am i right?)

Anyway I think you are the first to recommend something out of the norm?. How's your progress with the 2 warlord? Everything goin smoothly? Later do report back to us.

Meanwhile our Turgeon just reach trial 139 with the full defensive set (now he is at the same level as me. haha). Turgeon replaced Br with charge. i hope he will beat Kara at trial 140. I just surrender (at the moment)

Many thanks

[Turgeon]

Yes and ive try 4/6 defender with 2 fury since i use charge but it really didnt do it. I though maybe SOS will did enough dmg to compensate the 6 piece bonus of defender but not a good idea.

[Kardinaal]

Yes, the 6 piece defender bonus adds so much power it’s hard to get around. So I’m back to full defender too.

Made a fire Lilly to make me a decent xp set to farm tl90, to get materials so I can actually craft stuff to try out. As luck would have it, it came out lvl 77. Which got me an idea. Maybe shield warrior isn’t ideal for the season ladder push, but due to the huge amount of power it gives (easily 2000 levels worth of power), there might be a niche where it can really shine: gold ANB leader board.

So I’m running as many gems as I can get my hands on, and making a shot at the gold lb, with the following shield/DoT power stacking build:

rending slash
whirlwind, shield block, shockwave
sword and board, tough as nails, power infusion

6 defender (osmosis on helmet)
viscera and rylockes defender (2x fire enchant)
fire lilly
brooch of the purifying flame
belt of the whirling storm
integralas mantle

power, Ar and block rating on everything
Fourth slot movement speed, fire damage, vitality

The fire stacks from the brooch and weapon enchants depend on weapon damage, so all that stacked power gets factored in. And now here is the fun part: the fire Lilly, power infusion, and fire damage (together x7,35 damage) get factored in. Then when shockwave hits, that goes x7,35 again. So that’s over 5000% damage on those 100 stacks of fire damage you get every minute, which makes for a good deal of damage if you time shield block and shockwave right. On a crit build you could double crit with this for huge damages, but timing everything that makes up this damage stack with active sb for the power boost, double crits, talisman of storms,... Would be impossible. That’s where the constantly applied bonus from fire Lilly shines.

Going over the 3800 block rate mark gives me more power when shield block is on obviously, but also gives me around 33% critical block when shield block is on cooldown, for 33% more shield smashes (and thus a 33% damage increase while sb is down).

Survivability wise there’s the constant 10% max life heal from shockwave and tons of damage reduction (armour with 3 norgrim around 95%, block 72%, 25% sw, totals around 98,5%). That’s why I prefer the damage boost to rending slash (viscera/rylockes) over the extra damage reduction using blackguard would get me (which would take it up to 99%).


Since I’m on a budget gems wise, this Anb will probably be a dry run for the build. By next gold ANB I should have enough gems to try seriously.

[Turgeon]

Dunno whatit need to top 50 but for the moment 139 is the highest ive goes with shield warrior same for theexorcist

[Turgeon]

What is youre higher Kardinaal ?

[Stusmith50]

Last gold TL 143 was needed for warrior top 50

[Kardinaal]

To be honest I’m still crafting the defender set, and running for gems. Gear will be pretty awefull for me for now. Only been playing for a month and got 2 ct out of the 3 Anb I played.

That’s what got me thinking there’s got to be more to be had out of a shield warrior than I’ve been managing. Read over half these forums and got testing. And now I’m out of mats to build the set lol.

[Benedicto]

TBH I really miss playing SW in ANBs, so this gold I might build a warrior using Defender, and going into a budget. I'm thinking to test whether it can reach TL120 not unlocking the 2nd ability upgrade slot and not buying extra companions or any gem crates.

[Turgeon]

Gonna be tough without the second upgrade slot SW need lot of skill at 10 haha. But its probably doable

[Benedicto]

Yes it'll be a challenge and it'll be better to spend all the event timer in the last 2 or 3 days, but if it can't reach 120 then it's just ok for 110 for the 2nd CT.

[Turgeon]

If youre going shield warrior ill go for it too! Been a while but still my main ill go with charge whirlwind and shield block

[TheExorcist]

well, trying other so and so characters for a change
It's been awhile for me playin Whirlwind Shield warrior at ANB's
upcomin Gold ANB definitely back to square one:

Lovable Whirlwind Shield warrior for pushin

wat build? i wonder.
had enough of this "Battle Rage" thing
How bout the "Old ITZ reflexing Build". is it still doable??
erm. let do some checklist

1. it is compulsory to used the Belt of the templar
2. This is tricky: CR: is it important to have it at least one or two on gears or just put somethin else? well you dont have to used any CR on DW build (belt of the Templar). Just CD is sufficient.
3. Charm of Qol or VotwS. Playin for years still hard to decide/no satisfactory answer

any warrior could share their experience or give recommendation??
Many thanks

[Turgeon]

Well be at leastthree ? me you and benedicto in gold with shield warrior