On second thought, I went ahead and put diamonds in my armor, and like I said, I really didn’t see much of a difference in my shield’s longevity.
So just recently, I switched a few more things around to see if I could see what you were trying to tell me last night, DiEoxiDe. So I dropped wolf for boar, put back on my cooldown Yang’s, put a topaz in my helm, and rolled my gloves back to resource reduction to really beef up my shield and ran a couple of test Grifts after struggling all day with Grift 118.
Seems now I see just how important beefing up your shield can be. I checked D3planner (thanks again Iria for showing me how to use it) and between losing the emeralds and the attack speed on gloves and bow, in addition to the other changes, I went from around 55 billion to about 45 billion DPS. But despite that, just in my test runs, I was still able to stay pretty even on the timer even in a bad map but with decent mobs, switched level and got a decent map with bad mobs and my progress fell off.
So, I’ll still have to fish for the right circumstance, like I have been, but the beefed up shield gives me a little bit of more relaxed feel, which is what I really want. It seems I can still principally walk through the grifts even with the loss of nearly 20% damage if I fish enough. Just to illustrate. My sheet damage went from 4.3 mill to 3.6 mill. But the actual damage loss seems to be a lot less significant than that, despite what math or d3 planner or whatever says.
So let me say, thank you. I was a bit on the wrong side as far as the feeling of just putting diamonds in my armor. Needed to do a bit more than that as far as my season character goes but I eventually came to see things the correct way.
Thanks again.
Edit:
LOL, well, I didn’t realize that d3planner didn’t import the RoRG in the cube. Turns out to about a trillion difference or about 5.6 percent difference. Now that makes more sense.
The other day, you suggested dropping Gunes for Cindercoat on my non-season character to alleviate the resource problems of running so much attack speed. I said, I couldn’t do that because I need the defense to keep my shield up.
Well, I found a compromise. Well, actually it was something that Iria said a while back in this thread about Pride’s Fall being an alternative to Gunes in the Gizzard/Squirt’s set up.
I remembered that and put Pride’s Fall in the cube and it did the trick. Fixed my resource problem and gave me enough defense that it wasn’t too much of a loss from losing Gunes.
I ran a few 117’s in Non season this morning to see if I can beat my previous time and get on the leaderboard with my new clan tag. And it’s working like a charm.
Thanks for the suggestion. I can fire Evasive Fire once for the BoW buff and spend it’s entire cycle firing Multi-shot and lose little to no Hatred. Should make beating my previous time in Non Season a lot easier.
Edit:
Couldn’t post a third time because of forum rules but…
Well, I did it.
Tier 117 in Non-Season down with my new tag.
Time: 12:51.149 (just under a minute and a half faster) Good for 231 as of this posting.
Paragon: 2518
Shield: 318,157
Life: 124,025
Toughness after Evasive Fire: 161,514,464
Effective Shield Toughness: 414,327,412
I actually beat 117 a couple of other times but the times were a few seconds longer than the original. Then I got Battlefields and Festering back to back with Returned and Reapers on the former and more Returned and green ghouls and dark berserkers on the latter.
Haven’t tried to push a 118 yet. In process of pumping up my paragon for the end of season rollover.
I’ve switched some stuff upon advice of DiE, in non-season at least.
I switched to an Area Damage bow, rolled Area Damage on my shoulders, and switched my Restraint to an Area Damage one. All told it gets me to 105% Area Damage. So far it’s working out, but I haven’t really pushed with the set up though.
I do have a question. The other day, in Season I got a primal Wraps of Clarity that I was able to roll All Resist onto. But the secondary is Melee Damage Resistance. Out of Season however, I have a primal Wraps with Vit and Ranged Resistance.
My question is, how important is that Ranged Resistance?
In other words, which one should I use when season ends. I’m thinking the All Resist is more important but I want to make sure I’m not mistaken.
If you’re running Gizzard, I’d take all res + melee over vit + ranged any day. All res increases your shield toughness, vit does not. Ranged reduction doesn’t make up for the loss of the all res, especially when the all res ones also have a solid seconday with melee reduction.
It’s a little trickier if you’re running a non-Gizzard build because then the vit might make a little more sense.
But yeah for gizzard I’d for sure take the all res + melee ones.
I’ve been pretty lucky this season. Found a Primal Chest with Dex, All Resist, Discipline and so rolled 11% elite resistance on it. It’s better than my non-season one. Then there’s the gloves that I mentioned earlier in the thread, and now the near perfect bracers.
I’m hoping for a better quiver, Squirt’s, and Focus, but have had no luck on that front.
I really need to run some bounties, either in season or non, but I’m about 16 paragon from an even 1900 so I’m just trying to get there.
Then I have to gain about 130 on non season so that at rollover I’ll have an even 3000 paragon.
If the season lasts long enough, after that, I’ll run a boat load of bounties just incase Blizzard does something crazy like make all my Primal Yang’s and my Primal DML obsolete by increasing their multipliers.
Paragon: 1989
Time: 13:51.449 good for Rank 50 as of this posting. (And gets me on the leaderboard with my new clan tag.)
Shield: 311,613
Life: 100,380
Toughness after Evasive Fire: 105,252,888
Effective Shield Toughness: 326,771,113
Some things improved as far as gear. Got a better Squirt’s, not ancient, but better. Got a better Focus with Physical Damage on it, though the crit chance was only 4.5%. And got a slightly better DML which saving grace was 8% cooldown natively though it only had 11 Discipline. All of them came yesterday. The Squirt’s and DML through re-forging and the ring was a drop.
The new DML allowed me to put a topaz in the helm so I keep wolf. Score!
The maps were Stinging Winds, Desert Ruins, and that map with the winding paths leading to and from small larger areas culminating in a huge open area near the exit.
I can’t remember the mobs for some reason (perhaps my excitement) but the boss was the Infernal Maiden. Another Score. lol
d3planner shows my LPS at 151k (NS) including Templar loyalty…
details pane in game shows LPS at 151k
So by the definition of the Gizzard shield being 200% of total LPS, my shield should be at 302k…
but hovering over globe it only shows 275k
Is this just another example of the game not acurately representing a stat?
side note, same NS toon, if going more this route on shield and with a less than optimal chest piece would it make sense to roll LPS over VIT on chest or would hatred regen be better (already has AllRes)? I foolishly rolled up the VIT on it way back in the day before I knew better (like a helm that rolled 6/12 and like 920 dex that I rolled to 999 instead of to 6/15).
Try taking off the gem and putting it on again. If you check the shield the second you enter the game sometimes it doesn’t include the templar and boar buffs. Or you can take a bit of damage and it should go back up.
It also would have fixed itself by entering a Greater Rift. It might in a normal rift too, but I’m not certain if that’d because you likely got hit by something. But I know it goes where it’s supposed to go upon entering a Greater Rift.
Another option to use, is use Enchantress over Templar. You can take the equipment you have on your Templar (except the shield) and transfer it to your enchantress. Then slot her skills with Forceful Push, either Powered Armor or Missile Ward which give you 3% Armor and slows melee attackers or reduces ranged mobs damage by 6% respectively, Erosion for a damage bonus to mobs in a certain area, and Mass Control, turns enemies into chickens for a few seconds.
With Gizzard you don’t really need the Templars heals. And the enchantress’s attacks are ranged which means she isn’t just standing around as much because mobs aren’t in the Templar’s aggro range.
And Thunderfury and Wyrdward and Ess of Johan work just as well on Enchantress as they do the Templar.
At least that’s what I do. You could try it and if you don’t like it the equipment’s still there to give back to your Templar.
At any rate, the Enchantress just has more crowd control abilities. And I find her more handy due to them because Gizzard pretty much gives you all the heals you need.
For some reason, the amplification potions boost to regen doesn’t effect the shield while the other regen potion does. Not sure why but that’s just the way the potions seem to work.
I actually went and checked in game after I saw PMG’s post just to confirm the Amplification potion showed as a boost to sheet LPS (it does). Didn’t check whether it worked with the shield.
Although now that I think about it, there’s other stuff that shows as sheet lps that never worked with the shield. There was a bunch of monk skills that don’t get factored into the shield either. Mantra of Healing and Enduring Ally, IIRC. I think the base effect gets factored into the Gizzard Shield, but not the % bonus part?
So it might just be that % bonuses to lps don’t get factored into the shield at all?
EDIT: Ugh, I hate that we don’t have access to the old forums.
I meticulously documented a bunch of skills that were working/not working with the Gizzard shield with a bunch of screenshots and supporting math in the old bug report forums. Was going to revisit that to see if it was both the base effect and % bonus from Mantra of Healing/Enduring Ally that was excluded or just the % bonus. Then remembered we don’t have access to the old forums anymore
I’ve been stuck at 110 for a while and was missing clearing 111 by anywhere from like 30-90 seconds. I don’t fish so hitting an RG with no adds to give me an Oculus circle was seemingly a big issue.
So while browsing the clan LB, I noticed a bunch of higher clears using BoTP instead of Gizzard, even with Squirt’s.
Swapped to a 100 BoTP and managed to clear a 112 (good for rank 360, I believe my highest ever this late in a season). I was initially hesitant to remove Gizzard due to the damage increase from Squirt’s, but I only died once in the 112 (and only once in the 2 @ 111 I did prior). Granted, I didn’t have the Squirt’s buff up nearly the same amount of time due to poor play/positioning and some lousy rifts full of reapers and lacunis that jump right in your face, but it’s not like I was getting one-shot either.
I think subconsciously I was focused TOO much on keeping the shield up and not getting hit and not spending that focus on killing mobs…
I may try to move off Squirt’s (since I can’t manage it properly with or without shield) and see what I can find with a HFA…I know it’s not optimal, but if I’m not getting a decent buff from Squirt’s then it might be worth a shot for me.
Flavor of Time might also be worth considering, if you’re getting away from Squirt’s.
Although Flavor of Time will benefit most if you’re fishing. In a rift with mediocre pylon spawns, it doesn’t have much value. In a rift with top-tier pylon spawns, it adds a ton of value.
wudijo’s 128 clear was with Squirt’s, then his 130 clear was with Flavor of Time. He had really good pylon spawns for the 130, so he got a lot of value out of the Flavor of Time.
It’s also really hard to get a good one. So if you don’t already have one and don’t intend to fish like a mofo, HFA might be the better option. But Flavor of Time is at least worth considering.
I see lots of folks on the leader board too with Stricken or Powerful, but I’m not skilled enough to keep from getting hit, so Gizzard works best for me which is why I spend so much time and stat priority of pumping up my shield.
Gizzard allows me to play half-glass canon, stacking stats like attack speed and stuff like that while eliminating Vitality everywhere and putting defensive stats on pieces that can’t roll offensive ones.
It allows me to play really loose knowing in most cases, even if my life is well below 100k, my shield will stay up if I take some hits throughout the rift.
But that’s just me. Iria calls my style the “jigly puff” style. I’m not sure what that means but if it works then yeah, I’ll be a Jigly puff. lol
