Whirlwind Shield Warrior Beat Kara at Trial 150

[TheExorcist]

I'm so happy finally made it
hero's attribute for sharing:

wat I deeply observe (overall not just Kara)

1. Higher block is required (not anymore capped at 95%?)
2. Try 5k Power but in vain. Can I say power is not 'the key' to a whirlwind shield warrior?
3. For heaven's sake it's a CR CD build. Can't be low can it?
4. AR? I try the at least 1500 value. Unsatisfactory result
5. Vitality can't be low
6. Battle rage rocks (at the moment)
7. Massive pulling needed
8. Shield Warriors: NOT UNDERPOWERED anymore ( at the moment). Hopely can stay at the normal LB top 100
9.Thanks the DEV:for this new SW updated
10. Most important of all:

Mobile friendly: less than 20 fps can still do trial 150's

[Grand_Wazoo]

Congratulations you did it!
Now that Kara's gone you can go all the way up to 154...

[TheExorcist]

Grand Wazoo my dear friend You're right sir
shield warrior can still survive at Trial 154
ain't that sweet?
Many thanks

addition:

1. I think I had enough of this SW thing ( rest for awhile)
2. It's not an easy task to face Kara again ya know
2. Wat to do now?:

start all over with my long forgotten Lover:

HAVOC

erm have to do some reading at Our Ozymandius & other BH havoc lover postings etc. Next bronze? Definitely a Havoc.

[Ozymandius]

TheExorcist I have been playing around with the 4 Havoc:2 Demolitionist build. I did well in Gold ANB using a 6pc Havoc set, but the addition of Sticky bombs from the 2 Demo pieces feels like sort of a game changer.

[TheExorcist]

Ozymandius
I should change from full havoc to hybrid with 2 demo then. Now which LB player to follow? Erm. Are they any 4havoc 2 demo with decent amount of vit build?.

[kurtcabage]

Congratulation man!

[Kardinaal]

1. Higher block is required (not anymore capped at 95%?)
2. Try 5k Power but in vain. Can I say power is not 'the key' to a whirlwind shield warrior?
3. For heaven's sake it's a CR CD build. Can't be low can it?
4. AR? I try the at least 1500 value. Unsatisfactory result
5. Vitality can't be low
6. Battle rage rocks (at the moment)

1. Block still seems capped at 95% from a small incoming damage test done in the training grounds. Around one in 20 attacks hits substantially harder, thus passing block. What does change is your critical block. Any blockrate above 100% is critical block, and every crit block causes a shield slam. So if you have for example 115% block, you will do 15% more shield slams.

The 3600 blockrate (95%) breakpoint has to do with shield block: 7600 br gives 195% block, so max crit block of 95%. Any block above 3600 will mean more shield slams when shield block is not active, and ofcourse extra power when Sb is active. Extra tip: you get 500 br from s&b that is not listed in the LCS (lying character screen - oldschool Diablo II ref ), so you can in principle get away with 3100 br from gear.


2. You have over 3k power allready, with Sb adding 7600 more. So those extra 2k power is indeed not so much.

3. so yes crit crit crit

4. you do your best dmg when Sb is active, so Sb uptime is very important. I stack around 4.5k ar on my shield Lilly, and use belt of the whirling shield. This allows me to cast DT, ww, DT in a single 5s Sb activation. Then DT ww DT without Sb, then the next cycle Sb is up again. And every 4 or 5 cycles I can do 2 cycles with Sb in a row. So in short: I get over 50% Sb uptime, plus whatever charges blackguards adds. To be honest I got a little too much ar, DT-ww-DT in 4s. I bet with 3.5k ar I would still (just) be able to fit DT-ww-DT in the 5s uptime. But the extra second helps a lot in consistency, and what would I replace the ar with on a lily build anyway…

5. one of the biggest problems to still solve on my shield warrior is healing. Big life pool helps yes. But you also need to be able to dip below 35% health for getting those extra Sb charges (if using blackguards). And recover from it… It’s one of the reasons I like shockwave over ww.

6. Any source of damage for shield slam that isn’t yet more power is very welcome, and the extra healing procs from the 2 piece defender bonus also help tons I bet.


It took me quite some time to get this far understanding sword & board, as a lot of info we all took for granted is from “the good ole days”, when Sb was on all the time. The AR changes that ended that era, have changed the very nature of the shield warrior. It used to be a consistent dps machine. These days a shield warrior is burst damage, you do your damage when Sb is active. Granted I use DT as active, and use the extra ar both for faster burst (Sb uptime) and to cram extra damage into every burst (two DT per activation). You use Battle Rage for a dmg boost that lasts 5s, so your build might be less dependent on high AR. So you have less Sb uptime, and boosting your dmg when Sb is down by stacking more block might do more for you than it does for me.

[Kardinaal]

Ok I made a mistake in the numbers I just saw. My AR stack isn’t 4.5k, it’s 3.5k. The 40% reduction and 50% uptime are right though, so doesn’t change too much.

[Turgeon]

TheExorcist Going toward you just did 151
just pass the other SW haha

[TheExorcist]

Congrats Your Majesty
Turgeon. We should be proud. The three Stooges (You, Me and whoever the 3rd one might it be? Mr Cathe). Is it Grand Wazoo ehh????. All three pass Trial 150

[Turgeon]

Thnk. Now for me 154 will be really tough as i have a lot of difficulty to sinc tos with garm hope ill get it then well need to find a way to beat that kara at 155

[Turgeon]

153 done only one more to catch you up my friend and master

[TheExorcist]

Be quick I'm alone at 154 I'm afraid

[TheExorcist]

Garm skin is triple hard at 154. Hope u can beat that damn Devil

[Turgeon]

Hope so too. Didnt try yet but i always have diff to proc tos with good timing against garm so yes its gonna be real hard. Haha

[Turgeon]

TheExorcist ive just saw that ure shield and weapon arent celestialized for optimum stat. Maybe that could help you for kara 155 High cost but in mats But i know you have plenty or mats. Check stat on my shield and mace. If my memories is good ive put about 3 celestial essence to max them out

[TheExorcist]

You're right. I have three 76: chest integrals and shield slam bracer. I CT them all. I'm stupid & Impatience I'm afraid. Better try to craft one or two 77 later and hav it CT. Have to avoid try to obtain a 77 shield slam bracer. Pure luck and wat are the chances that finally I would obtain a 77 shield slam bracer ehh????? 100-150 million gold? Heaven's forbid. haha

[Kardinaal]

I’d up the chest piece. It’s got the biggest ammount of armour (except your shield maybe). So there’s decent benefits into upgrading that one, even a bit of extra dr goes a long way at high trials.

Integralis is also easy enough to up. But I also wouldn’t bother with the BOM, that’s a lot of crafting needed.

[Turgeon]

Im talk8ng about CE on wpn and shield only. CE is costly but for wpn dmg. Armor and block rating on shieldit worth it. Imo

[TheExorcist]

While goldly runnin with DW etc I try to do again trial 154 Timin decrease a bit. ( Add CR & Power). Maybe much later wll try my luck with Kara at 155

[Turgeon]

How do you fight this garm? U keep youre shield block ability for tos proc?

[Kardinaal]

Yes best to save one for tos. Since you have 3 in total you can hold one, and have some wiggling room in when to use the other two.

And since tos triggers every 30s, if you use your last one, by the next proc you definately have a new cast of Sb available. At base the cooldown is around 28s.

Ofcourse with ar on gear you get “extra” (40% faster cast speed gets you 2 Sb cooldowns in 30s), blackguards gives extra…

So basically just save the last globe for tos, extra cast I try to activate directly after attacks that need to be dodged, that way you are not running with Sb active.

[Turgeon]

Kk normally i tend to save all my SB for tos since that do a lot of DT causing lots of dmg butfor garm i dont work well enough haha

[Kardinaal]

I got to 138 on my Lilly shield warrior (with ww). Got a few upgrades, everything you see ct’d is 3 75s, one 76 and shield, mace and boots 77.

Main problem getting forward is healing. I should probably get rid of blackguards mace for whirlwind axe, maybe get some LoH.

[Kardinaal]

I changed out my rings for my high LoH jewellery from my pvp build, adding around 2.2k healing per attack, brought up haste to 3.6 attacks per second (before bonuses from frenzy). Did not do much survival wise, at least not on mob phase.

So waiting on the next Anb to get me a 77 whirlwind axe. As I see it the bonus on blackguard mace and set aren’t that impressive, and the extra healing of the ww axe is probably an upgrade.

If a decent healing source alone doesn’t help, I would need to introduce more damage mitigation. The easiest way would be to introduce some parry. This also opens up interesting possibilities for crit based shield warriors, like Belt of the Templar and flurry boosting deadly throw.

It’s way more complex than you’d think at first sight. Shield slam “attack speed” depends on the amount of attacks you block. This is influenced by:

- the amount of incoming attacks per second
- your dodge, parry and block rates

So while having 20% parry means you block roughly 15% less of incoming attacks, it might also help you survive pulling 15% more enemies, and would then have no influence on your dps. If it enables you to pull 20% more enemies, your dps would actually go up.

[TheExorcist]

Arawn dear old friend
I very much like your comment on Kristoff SW Bronze Anb build. I Post my remarks? here. haha

"For ages The Exorcist can't possibly play any type of shield warriors without whirlwind. Still remember years back Shilieen ( SW expert) try to suggest me to replace WW at higher trials (if I'm not mistaken). But but I find it very difficult, slow in moving hard in killing mobs fast, TIME CONSUMING (as if I could spread nicely peanut butter on a slice of bread and eat it till the end while waitin for the first mob to be killed!!) etc . Without whirlwind we also can't do the leaping thing or hybrid fury/warlord whirlwind proc??? etc etc"

For the Exorcist (at the moment)

exp farmin: WW
Trial pushing: WW

I would be grateful if anybody could teach me "how to play a SW proper without WW". Maybe via a video of some sort at the game video section of the forum

Thanks

[Kardinaal]

I also tried a lot of things besides ww to get my Lilly shield warrior past garm at tl139.

Tried shockwave as a replacement mob gathering skill and source of healing, it does help you survive, but is very demanding on the AR front. Problem is you miss one beat, bye bye healing stack and your shield becomes a tombstone. As for gathering mobs it slows my mob phase for about half a minute. It leaves me with too little time with garm to build up enough slayer stacks.

Tried Battle Rage but it clashes with the build I have. Since attack speed offers a shield warrior very little, it only leaves me with a small damage buff. But mob stage again took longer, and the extra damage didn’t weigh up to the loss of boss time.

Tried (briefly) with Turgon’s charge, but that’s all about crit so also not an option with fire Lilly. Didn’t try in the zone as it also needs a crit based build.

So far ww gives me the fastest mob phase. But survivability is a huge problem. The healing from defender 2 alone isn’t cutting it. And this is with a huge life pool.

To (hopefully) remedy that, I am bringing home a 77 whirlwind axe. This also means I need to think about attack speed more, as higher attackspeed gets more hits and thus more healing out of the axe. Yet another part of the puzzle to solve before dipping my build in crit sauce .

[TheExorcist]

help..help Does anybody has any ideas/good recommendation etc

"My 76 SW slam bom"

I'm not goin to try craft a 77 (gold wise I'm afraid). Thus 76 will do till the end?. after max physical damage wat to to do with this "CO"? Which attribute chronologically step by step to put CO until max?

[Turgeon]

Did you chech to ce. Your shield and wpn bfr?

[TheExorcist]

You're right if I want to 'co' better do it proper with weapons then the rest. Anyway Dunno any benefit in usin co at higher trials? As Naos says: as if there's no difference

[Turgeon]

Ive only use these CE to boost weapon and shield. The rest imo dont worth it

[TheExorcist]

Turgeon there are Shield warrior lovers ( not many of course) at the new LB. Nice. Where are you?? Now I see you. Very near to me. This is fun. You did great with Elban at 153 (8:36min & died just just once) u can beat "Garm the idiot" at 154 with ease/in no time.

After u beat Garm "do teach me" how to manage Kara at 155. To me Kara at 155 is so difficult (at the moment). BR? Fail. "DT? Most useless skill at 155" ( I take it back if somebody could beat Kara at 155 with DT). I absolutely hv no idea wat to do anymore.

Is trial 154 the new final destination for a whirlwind shield warrior. I dunno? hahaha. at least I'm happy. I've try my best.

Good luck

[Turgeon]

I just added some 15% block on my gear so 8m now at 110% block instead of 95 I cut about 1 min on the timer for elban. I did not try garm yet but i hope it gonna be enough to do it. But i dont really want to try it bfre the leaderboard reset.

[Turgeon]

Just check the lb. you are still the master then i follow you. I saw moni. Andromeda and duplicity. Tree other sw. isnt that sweet!

[Turgeon]

The only afvice i can give for kara if to keep youre shieldblock for tos proc. And the most importantimo. Is to use nogrim to cancel the blue rope of her minion so they cant have the defensive bonus. I let the red rope go since kara can have an off boost to make you some dmg and have the extra ability by reaching 30% life

[Naos]

I also like defender playstyle but since i am a newish player all my resources went to my push build.

Dropped gear can only help to just get the build going so you have a taste of what it is. But so far i liked it better.

As of now my main is almost complete only a decent Bom is needed. So i might join the club in a couple of weeks...

[Turgeon]

Cool naos welcome in the shield lover family haha

[TheExorcist]

Great. Small community of SW lovers. We don't aim big. We can't possibly beat "our elder brother" can we? The DW lovers

[TheExorcist]

Duelist?
For years I'm wondering but never try to ask the forum
It says CR increased by 150.
WAt does it means for a CR/CD shield warrior?
Say if I used belt of the whirlwind storm (not templar) plus duelist. Is Cr on gears & jewellery is sufficient?. No need to put CR on sockets items or jewellery enchanting . Better used them for power/life etc etc?. In other words high Cr is not preferable if used duelist??

Any ideas Thanks