Clarification on the deflect magic weapon

Magic weapon deflect is a very good way to create a shield but how does it work with signature spells and non channeling spells.
I haven’t been able to understand if I have it active or not.
Can someone clarify this please?

Each time you attack, you get a stack of Deflection equal to 4% of your max HP (or up to 8% with Blood Bracers) that lasts for 3 seconds.

If you attack 6 times in 3 seconds (so you’re attacking at 2 attacks per second), you’ll have up to 6 “stacks” of Deflection shields active, so you could have up to 24% (or 48% with Blood Bracers) in shields.

The stack rate of Deflection scales with your attack speed, but not with skill-specific attack speed bonuses like Shame of Delsere and Fragment of Destiny, unfortunately. Barrier Blades works with those items, but Deflection doesn’t.

EDIT: Also, if you hover over your health globe, it will display a number with how big your shield is. You can use this to figure out how many stacks you have active. At one point on a PTR they tested having an overlay over your health globe so you could see how much shields you had active without hovering, but they scrapped it :frowning:

3 Likes

Thank you TinneOnnMuin, that would had been welcome.
Edit
A follow up question, is it better to increase vitality and gem chest and pants with amethysts in the case of a shield creating build. The other option is to use emeralds and or rubies to increase armor.