Shield A gives Smite damage range of “20-60”
Shield B gives Smite damage range of “25-45”
which would you choose?
Shield A is better if its a discussion of no mods I think. Higher average, higher maximum.
But smiting is not entirely just the smite damage on a shield.
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Shield damage is additive with smite damage from Holy Shield. And more importantly, from the up to +400 damage on Grief. And if I’m understanding the math right, those are the only things that really matter when trying to compare things between shields (assuming you hold the rest of your gear/skill levels constant).
The difference between the shields will be a lot smaller if you have a Grief. Bigger if you don’t. And it’ll depend on your Holy Shield skill level, the higher your Holy Shield level the more it will dilute the difference between the shields. So basically the difference between the shields barely matters if you have a really high level Holy Shield + Grief, and will matter a bit more if you don’t have Grief and have a lower level Holy Shield.
Playing around with some numbers, it could be maybe up to a 5% difference in average damage without Grief and less than 1% with Grief.
E.g. with a level 25 Holy Shield and no Grief.
Shield 1 = 20-60 + 77-80 = 97-140
Shield 2 = 25-45 + 77-80 = 102-125
Shield 1 is ~4.4% more average damage.
Compare to a level 35 Holy Shield and a +400 Grief:
Shield 1 = 20-60 + 117-120 + 400 = 537-580
Shield 2 = 25-45 + 117-120 + 400 = 542-565
Shield 1 is 0.9% more average damage.
You could play around with your gear in https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner/ if you wanted an answer for your specific gear (just make sure you activate/reactivate Holy Shield when making changes! If you add/remove +skills you have to reactivate it or it will use the old skill level in the calculation).
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