Considering the change to allow Insight in a bow, I’d like to make the suggestion of allowing Infinity in a shield.
Right now Infinity is one of the major runewords for frankly any build that focuses on elemental damage, and allowing it only in Polearms pretty much locks people into an Act 2 Merc.
Allowing the runeword to also be made in a shield would greatly free up people to use different Mercenaries. You can’t stack the runeword, because you can’t wield two shields nor wield a shield with a polearm.
Nor will it significantly buff current top builds with two exceptions, and those two can be handled rather easily. I will address those two (Lighting Fury Javazon, and Lightning Sorceress) at the end of this post.
Consider first that being a 4 socket runeword, Infinity would need to be made in a Monarch for most characters to use. So first of you need additional strength changing your attribute distribtion. Furthermore, the primary benefits of the conviction aura apply to caster builds, who will need to give up running a Spirit shield to wield an Infinity shield themselves. Not only does this mean giving up +2 Skill points, but it also means giving up a significant amount of faster cast and resistances. In fact Sorceresses cannot achieve the fastest break point without Faster Cast on their shield, so choosing to use an Infinity Shield as a Sorceress means accepting a lower fast cast break point.
Now is it worth it for the conviction aura? Sure, but they already have access to the Conviction aura by running an Act 2 Merc. The real question is if it’s worth it for the other benefits that you can get by running a different Merc. For elemental casters that probably means an Insight, so either Act 2 or Act 1 Merc, or possibly an Act 5 Merc with a Plague sword. Basically addressing mana supply or possibly allowing the penetration of more immunities. Neither of which are a bad thing in my opinion.
This would allow either for farming a wider number of areas, or make mana pool management easier, allowing for a greater diversity of builds. They probably wouldn’t increase clear speeds compared to the benefits of fastest cast in my opinion.
Elemental melee characters would also benefit, except for the elemental damage Paladin (who doesn’t need any buffs). This is because Paladins are better off running their own maxed Conviction aura instead so they don’t use Infinity in the first place.
Additionally, non Paladins running dual Dreams… well they can’t, because a dual Dream takes up the Shield slot. Same for dual Dragons.
Fire Claw Druids however can benefit, and they probably need it. They could run an Act 1 Merc with a Faith Bow if they have Infinity on their shield.
Of course, you could also run an Infinity shield on an Act 3 Merc, but remember that means again not having Spirit on the shield, which constrains the Act 3 Merc even more when it comes to fast cast rate and +skills than it does the player. Additionally, the Act 3 Merc doesn’t have enough strength to wear a Monarch Shield without + Strength on other equipment, further limiting what Fast Cast and + Skill items they can wear.
And again, Casters (like the Sorceress) are better off with a melee Merc like an Act 2 or Act 5 Merc, while the Act 3 Merc is prone to moving out of the way of enemies. So again, if you aren’t going to be wearing the Infinity shield yourself as a Caster, your probably better off with an Act 2 Merc wielding Infinity instead of the Act 3 Merc.
So really, the buffs to top tier builds are marginal (with two exceptions), and generally in the direction of greater flexibility and diversity instead of a straight power boost.
The exceptions are ranged Lighting damage builds, meaning the Lightning Sorceress and the Lightning Fury Amazon. This is not because of the Conviction Aura, it’s because Infinity gives negative Lightning Resistance to targets (as high as -47% potentially).
There is a simple solution to that. Fortitude and Phoenix runewords have already established the precedence that runewords can have slightly different effects depending on whether it’s made in a weapon, a shield, or body armor.
Just do the same thing for Infinity. In a polearm leave it as is. In a shield replace the negative enemy Lighting Resistance with something defensive, like 10% to 15% Lighting absorption or something.
This would be a simple change that would greatly increase the diversity and flexibility of end game builds.
PS For some reason I cannot select PTR Feedback as the Category, nor even General Discussion. Maybe I’m missing something as I only got drawn in to posting because of the PTR, so I’ve never posted on the forums before.