Whirlwind Shield Warrior Beat Kara at Trial 150

[Kardinaal]

Well seeing you use ww belt you are going for shield block uptime. If you stack power on gear, you won’t really notice it much, because of the huge power boost and type one diminishing returns.

So crit damage and crit rate are probably a good choice, putting your stats in places where they suffer less from diminishing returns.

”Harvesting” alacrity with a 6 atk/s attack speed frenzy as a primary attack is also a good way to get more uptime on shield block. When using both tricks and adding around 2k ar, you can have very good uptime on sb without investing too much stat points.

and at let’s say 40% sb uptime, why not just rely on the blockrate to power conversion, and crit multiplier (and yes do allmost 0 damage for the other 60% of the time). I can tell you, the burst nature of it will give you plenty of active gameplay. Really flexes the fingers If you go all out. . (Mine stacks 3.5k ar and is slightly too fast if I pull out all the stops). For my fingers at least.

[Kardinaal]

On the defensive end, one gear slot worth of parry goes a long way, especially if you have enough blockrate for decent critical block so you still do enough shield slams. Takes your damage mitigation up a lot.

Parry also seems to work on some attacks that can’t be blocked so seems to affect the whole blocking thing less than you would expect. And again those are stats not suffering from diminishing returns, where as more life, armour,… would. Divide and conquer ?.

For the rest, choosing life over armour or the other way around, depends largely on your weapon. With ww axe or sanguinarius definately life over armour. With full blackguards going 50/50 might be better. Less healing so you need to mitigate more damage.

[TheExorcist]

Oic...
erm erm. After slowly go through the lengthy explanation:

In other words:
"High CR (CD included) plus High AR (2K- to be exact 2040 or at least 37% cool reduction) is the preferable choice for a Duelist whirlwind shield warrior (shield slam bom)

Thanks Kardinaal

[Kardinaal]

That’s my oppinion at least.

[Edd]

Got a level 77 Shield Block bracers when I was trying to craft one for Cleave. I typically have been doing axes+cleave, but have lost interest in this. Looking for advice switching this shield warrior. Any guide on the following:

1. What stats to prioritize - I see shield block can crit, so I assume Crit damage and crit rating are pretty high, since you can't rely on Belt of Templar to inflate CR.
2. How much haste? I saw some questions as what are the break points for Whirlwind... do we know?
3. How much block do you need? I currently have 4090 (102%). Is going over 100% good or diminishing returns?

That's all for now, thanks!

[Kardinaal]

A shield warrior is very much a burst damage build. With shield block active you do good damage, when it’s off you don’t. So shield block uptime is key. So anything that helps with this is best (I suggest 2k AR in stead of the usual 1.5k). And since you allready get a ton of power from shield block, you indeed want to to focus on crit, so thou don’t run into diminishing returns.

As for how much attack speed is needed, hard to say. You are less dependant on cleave, but higher attack speed give you more cooldown reduction from alacrity. With frenzy bonuses on a main char with max bonuses, base attack speed will do fine, for Anb you might want to add a few blue crystals to your sockets as you probably won’t have max celerity. If for some reason you don’t use frenzy add 25% more to compensate.

Shield block is another hard one. Any block percentage above 100% adds to the critical block mentioned in the sword and board passive and thus leads to more shield slams. Also, every point in blockrate doubles as power when sb is active. Some people indeed stick to 3.6k-4K block on gear. Together with the extra block you get from shield block, this gives you decent crit block. More will help you do more shield slams when shield block isn’t active, but that’s also when your damage is lower so I don’t think it’s worth going over that ammount.


Shield warriors are very interesting as you need a diverse range of stats, and depending on how much you invest into shield block uptime ideal stats change. For example if you don’t invest much in shield block uptime, a bit of power, and some extra blockrate for more shield slams when sb is down might be worth investing in.

As for belt of the Templar: I did some testing a while ago with one gear slot worth of parry and the belt, and found:

- 10% parry doesn’t really interfere much with blocking as parry works on magic attacks too, block doesn’t. Since roughly 1/3rd of attacks are magic, the 10% parry only leads to around 6% less block.

- since you have way more damage mitigation compared to a cleave build, you are able to do larger pulls in mob phase, and 10% parry is enough to keep the cr boost going most of the time. Ofcourse if you are doing lower level trials where mobs die fast, the belt gets triggered way less, so it’s only an option for push builds.

So if you want a higher damage shield block burst with lower uptime, belt of the Templar might be a good choice. Most of my shield warriors are fire Lilly based so I don’t have too much experience with lower sb uptime builds.

[Wulfric]

Well this is more fun than the meta 4W2F... TL 137 done and Elban beckons...

The 77 shoulderpads were a surprise and an early Christmas present as Wulfric is my original toon so I have no idea where he sits in terms of the crafting "bag."

Need a better shield though

[Kardinaal]

Nice to hear you are having fun with your shield warrior Wulfric.

A decent shield is indeed a must, and once you get to higher trials you will find deadly throw starts to add less and less overall damage, so you might want to change to battle rage or even charge at some point.

There is one possible exception: Kara. Deadly throw just melts Kara’s minions.

[TheExorcist]

erm erm lemme see After runnin 150 with a success a few time
This is my latest attributes/status for the old permanent whirlwind shield warrior (im satisfy with it -but havent try to lower the time at 154 or try Kara at 155 - just 150 on and on and on -im afraid)

Always "a good sign" when facing Kara at 7 min:

Addition:

If only I hv a '77" shield slam bracer. Well a 76 for years. haha. By the way is there much difference wether it's a 76 or 77 shield slam bracer? I absolutely hv no idea. At the moment a 76 will do. It's all that I have (at the moment).

Hv a nice day

[Kardinaal]

The main benefit of a 77 bracer is you get a few extra % worth of physical damage boost. Since you can only get the stat on a few pieces of gear, a little extra seems to go a long way. Also this again is a damage boost stat other than power so very useful on a shield warrior, especially if it also got a high end shield slam boost.

To give you an idea: on my Lilly shield warrior changing from talisman of power to talisman of doom got me to one Garm higher, now stuck at TL 144. And I expect the only things that will give me the extra damage I need to surpass that, will be from %physical damage (so focussing now on getting those items to 77).

Ofcourse on a crit based one just stick with talisman of storms, no other talisman comes near in terms of dmg boost.

To be honest I should probably recraft everything from scratch and get rid of the power on all my gear for armour and one slot of parry. This would give me so much survivability I could probably survive full map pulls at my tl level, cutting down on mob phase time a lot. 99% overall damage mitigation should be possible, and would make it more easy to heal up the damage that trickles through with ww axe and the 2defender bonus. Shield warriors do their best damage when they are inside a huge mob not moving an inch after all. And even with no power on gear I would still easily pass 10k power with sb active.

[Edd]

Managed to craft a 77 helm and 77 shield. Focusing stats on Crit Rating, Crit Damage, Shield Block and AR, (armor on the shield). We'll see how it goes after this ANB.

[TheExorcist]

is 154 the final destination for a whirlwind shield warrior?

Honestly I dunno. Why?

1. Haven't try 155 with diligence.
2. My shield warrior build is not completed. Well I would happily trade (figure of speech) all my gears related to all my 4 other lovable hero's/ all my gemstones, half of my 600 million gold etc etc etc if I just could get my hands on/obtain "the one and only 77 shield slam bom". In my honest opinion the most important/powerful thing for a shield warrior is "slam bom".
3. Wat to do? erm later just try try try at 155 with the 76 I'm afraid.

Hv a nice day

[Kardinaal]

I’m changing a few things on my fire Lilly shield warrior build.

I am where I can rerolling the power stats and enchants on my push gear. Since I get loads of power from shield block and clvls anyway (still well over 15k), I am changing over to two dodge, one parry and armour for the rest. This will allow me to better tank mobs and (hopefully) get me some extra damage and osmosis on the boss.


I am currently running tests on trinkets, to find out what the best companion trinket is for my fire Lilly. The jury is still out but here are the contestants:

talisman of doom: doubles nearly all my damage, and even a poor stat lvl 72 one outdamaged top by a LOT.

charm of Qol: cleave/frenzy combo has a lot of benefits. A fast cleave means extra damage, and fast attack speed gives more alacrity for more shield block uptime and more hits on Whirlwind so more healing with the axe.

And getting a mention and a ribbon:

Vial of the wind spirit: an extra pulse for easy mob control, and a nice speed boost for both cleave and ww. The charm of choice if you don’t want to unlock or max two primary attacks, and on any farm build.


All of the changes you see here are linked to one thing: find damage sources other than raw power, be they sb uptime, physical damage,… If that isn’t possible, stack defensive stats for more damage mitigation (low levels of dodge and parry, armour). Not quite there but I should be over 30 mil toughness when I get the gems to reroll what gear I can. Also I only remade one ring so far, and still 17 item levels away from perfect, so I hope to hit 35k toughness when maxed.

More toughness means bigger pulls, more mobs that attack, more blocks, more shield smashes, so a solid defence might well be the best offence.


skills:

Frenzy
shield block / whirlwind / battle rage
s&b / tan / end


gear:

ww axe / blackguard shield
full defender
azure carnival cape
belt of the whirling storm
Shield slam bom
Fire lilly / ?

[TheExorcist]

I dunno wat to say this shield warrior thing.
as a shield warrior lover sometime it's very difficult to analyze this and that.

Ex power. For years till now I'm wondering: Is it important or just discard it in total???

I sit at 154. Try to decrease the timing a bit. But fail fail fail. As an afterthought:

1. Put a few power gemstones.

2. Ability down from 37% to 36% Cooldown.

3. Decrease a bit Critical rating from 55% to 54% etc

The timin decrease.
hv a nice day

[Kardinaal]

On the power / no power thing, it is indeed a hard one. Well not with fire Lilly as the only belt worth something is botws, and that automatically gets you higher sb uptime.

For a crit one, Templar belt and a bit of parry might be a viable option, and you would have lower sb uptime. And since power on gear is most noticeable when sb is off, this might make a better case for power.

And of course, no power on gear still leaves me with over 3k from clvls. There are also 2 lvl 77 items I have that I can’t reroll the power with, so I won’t be removing all power. And I might just stick with one ring rebuilt. That would leave me with around 1k power on gear.

The extra defense should result in more shield slams as I can face tank bigger mobs so receive more attacks per second. And (I hope) this will lead to better damage than just piling on power as that got me stuck at tl143 (allready added 7 levels worth of gear and still I can’t pass Garm). so that route won’t get me close to your level . And if it doesn’t get me higher than this, well I guess that’s a result too…