A quick guide for optimizing Squirts with Gizzard gem/Fortress Ballista

Hi. In game, I’ve been approached quite a bit about how to make the most out of this combo, so I thought I’d put together a quick guide with some helpful tips. This is mostly a thread consolidating information that’s been posted in random threads here with a few things of my own. If there’s anything I may have missed, feel free to add on. This thread is assuming Gizzard/Squirts with the new UE/CC3 setup.

1. Sheet toughness is not an accurate representation on what to expect for your Shield. This is because the shield you generate from gizzard does not take into account vitality.

If your goal/playstyle is to keep this shield up as much as possible, vitality becomes the worst stat to have in general. You would want to go full on damage reduction such as all resistance, single resistances, wraps, gunes, SP gloom etc. This also gives dex more value as it’s not a “true” diminishing return factor when it comes to armor, which helps out your shield.

2. Your shield does not regenerate via life per second like health.

When your shield takes damage, it stays at that state until after you don’t take damage for 4 seconds. Due to the incoming bonus damage from squirts on the first hit, it is crucial that you don’t consistently take damage until your shield gets a chance to recover to it’s max state. Often times this is what causes shields to drop prematurely.

Shield not regenerating like health is to prevent permanent snapshotting to gain a super shield. DMKT, Iria and I attempted to do so for nearly 5x the shield of our health, but with the shield “resetting” after 4 seconds instead of regenerating it was not possible :stuck_out_tongue:. You can still go into the GR with the super shield, but it’ll only last until the very first hit.

3. After shield drops with squirts, there’s a 2 second activation time before the damage from squirts starts to ramp up.

Much like gizzard gem, you cannot get hit during that window for the buff to start.

4. Consider rolling life per second on belt.

The normal quadfecta is dex/vit/ar/life % for most belts. In this case, try rolling life per second instead of life % if you are following point 1. With lower vitality, life % has a lot less value in total, and of course 0 value for your shield.

You can also consider rolling life per second on bracer (you get up to 10k on the bracer slot) in place of vitality or dex. All resistance works well in place of vitality as well.

5. Consider using evasive fire, hardened as your generator.

With the addition of the crimson set, resources are a bit easier to manage and therefore opens up other generator opportunities. Hardened is a great choice for 25% more armor in tight pinches. This also scales well with shooting for dex over vit in paragon points, helping your shield out quite a bit for very little sacrifice.

6. Consider using the life per second legendary potion.

This is a very good potion for gizzard and unlike the other gear stuff, you can snapshot this potion continuously during the rift. The 20k per second you get from potion is worth 20 Gizzard levels. If your shield drops, use the potion and let the shield pop back up. You’ll then have an extra 20k worth of regen tagged on to the shield.

IMO the best potion to use for this setup but requires some management from the player.

You can also do the same thing with smoke screen, healing vapors and the passive brooding, but those require hefty sacrifices to skill/passive choices, whereas potion is practically a free slot by comparison.

7. Cubing Prides Fall is an excellent option for both physical and fire.

The RCR from prides fall gets added to your sheet RCR (with diminishing returns), therefore scales with crimsons 3pc buff. This is a nice way to add a little more toughness to the shield as well as reduce cost of vault and MS for more MS’s throughout the rift. A great option for a boost in both offense and defense if you don’t need the raw toughness of gunes.

Prides fall will stay active as long as you have the shield up.

8. There’s no need to worry about a laughably low health pool using this combo.

It is common to be around 300k health pool if going full blown gizzard/squirts CC3. If you’re taking any damage to your health pool, the squirts 50% incoming damage bonus is not in effect. Couple that with the increase toughness from CC3 and the insane life regeneration from the gizzard gem, you’ll stay at near full health most of the time. I have yet to die in my normal farm runs in mid 110’s nor have I died yet in 120+. YMMV.

EDIT:

9. Consider using Fortress Ballista in armor cube instead of gizzard for season 20.

Fortress Ballista works similar to gizzard but you are able to restore your shield upon attacks, making it a stronger option than gizzard. This will only work in season 20 with the ability to cube another weapon in the armor slot. For most, however, you sacrifice gunes, so give it a whirl and see if it works out for you.

Hope this helps out anyone interested in the combo. Happy pew pewing!

16 Likes

Thanks Die, lots of great info there.

I’ve been doing a lot of testing with this set also.

Cubing Stone Gauntlets while wearing Molten Wildebeest’s Gizzard makes you super tough. I had to sit on top of a frozen orb in a GR115 to knock my shield down. The added toughness does come with a DPS loss.

A cubed Magefist adds the DPS at a cost of toughness. If you are good at avoiding damage, this may be the way to go.

A cubed Magefist while wearing Gogok is the most fun for me, but you will lose the Squirts buff more often if you are not careful. This works our very nicely on large spider and fatty maps.

1 Like

I want to add in a few bugs/limitations:

BEWARE of frozen orbs (before they explode) and poison gas clouds (from dead accursed enemies or Voracity) as they instantly reset your Squirts and possibly Pride’s Fall debuff without compromising your shield. They even reset the buffs with a shield pylon so it’s obviously a bug!

It’s also worth mentioning how the Gizzard shield regenerates:

When you equip the gem or take any damage, the gizzard starts an invisible timer with 4 seconds. Getting hit again resets the 4 second timer. When the 4 second timer runs out, it refreshes the shield to whatever life/second you have at that instant. Thus, it’s possible to snapshot a big shield if you time something like Healing Vapors when the Squirt’s buff is at “2”.

Unfortunately, there is no way to see your remaining shield unless you mouse over your health pool so you need to pay attention to when you get hit if you try to snapshot the life/sec for the bigger shield.

You can take the ratio of your shield to life and multiply it by your toughness to get a good approximation. For example, if you have 200k shields with 700k life, and your sheet toughness is 500M (which doesn’t factor in shields), then the “shield toughness” is about 143M and your “total toughness” is 643M.

While the Stone Gauntlets make you tanky, you don’t want to be hit if you’re using Squirts. In order to keep the SG buff active you need to keep getting hit which means you’re not giving your shield time to regenerate and thus will eventually lose the buff. I would recommend either Pride’s Fall or Visage of Gunes as the toughness option.

3 Likes

Bogan Traps and the Anarch Charge will also remove Squirts through shields and shield pylon.

Thx for the summary!

Did anybody test brooding with Gizzard? I know it’s not ideal for F+R and UE (maybe with EW - wear RorG) - or with other builds. Like some RF builds … one could also use Fortress Ballista to get another shield on top. UE could use it too - maybe for lower levels.

Messed around with Brooding on the PTR - felt buggy - but didn’t really test it.

What lvl do you guys expect to clear?

Awesome. Thanks for the support. Edited OP with info from Iria and Kosstheboss.

I did, it also stacks with Healing Vapors. I was able to get around a 1.5M shield by stacking paragon vitality with that. However, as soon as you take any shield damage, after 4 seconds, it refreshes back to your current shield (which in my case is around 300k).

Do you think with prides cubed we can drop seethe rune on vengeance for dark heart to have that sweet 1b toughness?

I already get 1B+ toughness with the Pride’s Fall cubed and no Dark Heart! It’s worth noting that the Pride’s Fall provides a flat 1.429x toughness buff while active and almost offsets the Squirt’s damage taken debuff completely. The Visage of Gunes is still superior for toughness though with its 2x toughness buff.

Perhaps I shouldn’t use toughness but instead ask would it be worth dropping seethe for dark heart instead of using evasive fire hardened and seethe? I comes down to have more DR but less hatred regen. Which results in higher squirts up time but lower MS up time. I believe if you already maintain 100% squirt up time seethe/hardened will be better.

Uhg, I just experienced this VS Voracity.

It works, though I’d suggest getting hatred regen on chest if you go that route. Sacrificing an all rez/vit roll for it won’t matter since you have dark heart.

Ya, blighter is the same way :confused:

1 Like

Using these tips, with 877 paragon in Season, rolling off vitality where I could for regen or Armor, I completed a Grift 105 with just a smidge over 294,000 life. Shield is worth 315,000. I only have 2 augments of 400 on Captain’s belt and pants.

Folks above me, are using Stricken instead of Gizzard, but I enjoy the security of Shield. I just wish they’d fix the bug where ground affixes of rift guardians pierced your shield taking away Squirt’s buff without breaking the shield.

Anyway, the seasonal character is Rynn, if you want to check my profile.

Edit: With some slight fishing, principally avoiding the barracks map within two, I just beat 106 with one more 400 augment and Paragon 900. Cracked the top 100 on the leader board. Rank 74. Woo Hoo!!!. Never been that high up even this early in the season. lol

2 Likes

A good read, thanks DiEoxidE :slight_smile:

BTW, anyone had studied the Shield from “Fortress Ballista”?

Quick update:

I lucked out and re-forged a Primal Yang’s and DML in a total of five rolls. So I attempted a 107 and completed it with seconds to spare. My life total was just over 241,000 and shield value was 320,000 and my Paragon Level was 941. I’m figuring at some point I’ll have to replace Zie’s with Stricken. But now, I’ll augment some of my equipment and might try a 108 sometime this morning or later in the afternoon.

Just thought I’d share.

Edit:

Augmented my bow and completed a 108 about 2 hours ago. I’ll probably level a couple of more gems and put augments on my shoulders and Focus before attempting 109. Looks like if I can complete the 109, I’ll be in the top 50. Right now, I’m somewhere around rank 67.

4 Likes

Fortress Ballista shield works just as well, you’ll sit somewhere around a 200-300k shield. I liked it because it regenerates fast and I believe double hits from DML will give double shield stacks, the fast recharge helps with ticking ground effects.

However, it’s hard to replace Dawn, perhaps it can be used on another build?

UE grenades uses Fortress Ballista as one of the weapons. It won’t be as powerful in this season because it requires Depth Diggers, Aquila, and Hellcat Waist Guard and is better with EW than F&R. So it’s really hard to work in Crimson’s and Squirt’s.

Gratz on your GR 122 tonight Die

109 down with 1:10 to spare. Paragon 1027. Sheet Toughness 188 mil (367 with Evasive Fire. 214,000 Life. Shield 310,000. Rank 44 as of this posting.

I did it, I cracked the top fifty.

I want to apologize if these posts come off as bragging. I’m just thrilled that this build works even with low paragon. If you folks don’t mind, I’d like to keep posting my progress. If it’s getting to be too off putting, I’ll stop. I really don’t want to come off as bragging.

And I want to thank you folks for putting up with it. And thanks DiEoxidE for posting the concept behind the build and inspiring me to take it and run with it.

1 Like