D3 Crusader Shield Bash

General Discussion
1

Hi Sader’s im a roland set user and i love shield bash, i came to the forum to say the reasons why the the build falls behind are:

  1. Drakons lesson does not power up the build properly suggestion raise its power to 2000%

  2. Piro marella shield is like mandatory to get 50% resource cost reduction

Most of users use captain crimson set (20% resource cost reduction) and cinder coat (30% resource cost reduction fire skills which means most of us use Crumble )

So we get 100% resource cost reduction → piro marella 50% + crimson set 20% + cinder coat 30% (if used on kanai’s cube)

Attention Cindercoat doesn’t count has a resouce cost reduction only triggers if a Fire Skill is used ( Shield Bash Crumble)

→ Laws valor unstoppable force (50% resource cost reduction), most of us dont use it because we like Critical for a glass cannon style (50 % critical damage)

  1. Flail of the Ascended (shield glare now deals damage equal to the last 5 shield Bash Casts) it should also increase the damage of shield bash for 10 seconds up 1000% after the use of the 5 stacks to trigger our cannon Final Witness

with the actual status the regular build can only push for a 90 Gr above that it falls

Shield Bash users dont like Novarald’s set so for speeds we use Laws of Hope wings of angels and Iron Skin Flash

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2

I’m not going to get too much into the misunderstanding of RCR, the calculation is off, 100% RCR is free casts and damage immunity from Crimson. That’s not what is happening. For example the multiplication is additive: 50% * 28% is 64%

This is what I’d suggest as a starting point for PTR changes. Make Drakkon’s Lesson boost Sweep Attack too, really… it can boost all Crusader Secondary skills without consequence.

Let’s agree that Shield Bash should not use Norvald’s. The most fun part of Shield Bash is nuking with Shield Glare. The ideal weapon load out looks like this:

Piro Marella: 80% RCR and 80% increased Shield Bash damage.

Flail of the Ascended: Shield Glare deals 400% the damage of your last 20 Shield Bash casts.

Final Witness: Shield Glare hits all enemies around you. Enemies with more than 50% health are hit twice by Shield Glare.

This makes the nuke in line with Bombardment 2000-3000 Trillion, while allowing the player to do small single target damage ~10-11 Trillion @ 5kp.

3 Likes
3

i forgot to mention heaven with Piro marella; captain crimson set and Cindercoat, we still use shield glare with Zealous Glare because we still loosing alot of our resource

4

I used to have an amazing shield bash setup when doing GR110s was considered strong, lol. It was so much fun. It was based around Furnace and Piro (I dont remember if he cube was in yet). Basically you spammed shield bash like a dingaling and killed everything.

Flail of the Ascended doesn’t work in case you were wondering.

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5

Flail does work. What was the issue you had?

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6

I haven’t played Shield Bash build for ages but when I did, the damage output felt really inconsistent. Get 5 stacks with Shield Bash then then hit Shield Glare to unleash the stacks, it always seemed it was like 50-50 whether it’ll merely tickle or nuke the enemies. I long suspected there was something off about the flail and how it applied the damage.

That was quite a while ago however. I have no idea of its current state.

1 Like
7

I’ll test it again. A recent test a few months showed it working, but I wasn’t looking for it to not work, nor noticed it not working.

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8

just update 3. Flail of the Ascended (shield glare now deals damage equal to the last 5 shield Bash Casts) it should also increase the damage of shield bash for 10 seconds up 1000% after the use of the 5 stacks to trigger our cannon Final Witness

i forgot to mention heaven with Piro marella; captain crimson set and Cindercoat, we still use shield glare with Zealous Glare, and yet we still loosing alot of our resource because zealous glare single target and bossing doesnt return enough resource to keep spamming shield bash

9

Due to how the bracers function, the more effective rune would be pound, since it’s single target.

Secondly, since the flail is a bit wonky, it stacks per target hit, not per cast, which favors the pound rune more, since the final blast of Shield glare uses the five single target hits of pound, rather than the extra hits from an aoe one.

That said, it still needs more modifiers, and fixing some of the mechanics wouldn’t hurt, like changing the bracers to affect the first 3-5 targets hit, and maybe have the flail stack per cast rather than per target hit.

3 Likes
10

That is because your choice of playing critical, @ 64 CHC, critical is 7.8% damage and locks Bash Crumble rune. Whether this is best form is questionable vs other runes. The resource issue is non existent if using Unstoppable Force or Embodiment of Power + Stone Gauntlet in cube.

Roland need love whether SW or SB… but I really doubt resource cycle is an issue.

2 Likes
12

why would you sacrifice Prophet for Embodiment of Power, stone gauntlet makes roland set insufficient unless you add attack speed on items

13

I don’t think it matters what rune you use, you still receive the cc immunity. And also, doesn’t iron skin help with cc immunity?

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14

I played a bit more today. In GR push, Pound was most effective. I did a GR110 in crappy maps in ~12 min using Flail of the Ascended, Piro and The Final Witness.

Inconsistent Damage Due to Too Many Variables
Compared to other builds, the whole damage experience is inconsistent and the approach to maximize is confusing because the numbers are all over the place:

  1. Flail of the Ascended stacks can reach 5 stacks with one attack. If we trigger Shield Glare, the damage resembles one of the previous hit – not really the sum of 5 enemies hit. The Pound rune doesn’t experience this much as because the AoE is smaller, however the other runes do.
  2. Drakon’s Lesson, did you hit less than 3 enemies? It’s hard to tell when surrounded by trash.
  3. Missing a Critical Hit makes it hard to figure out what’s happening.

There are times when I strike for 30T, but most of time I see numbers like 5-11T.

Shield Bash should double down on Block Chance
Getting to 100% block chance yields only 37% damage gain, the sacrifices are:

Sources Block %
% Block Chance on Shield 11%
Hold Your Ground 30%
Provoke:Hit Me 50%
Justice Lantern 16%

You automatically lose when you start including the above. It’s just not worth it to sacrifice of CoE or RoRG, Holy Cause, etc… so what’s the point of the % Block Chance trait being on the Shield Bash skill? Completely dumb right?

Here are My Recommendations for a Shield Bash Buff

Drakon’s Lesson: Increases the damage of Shield Bash by 400%.

Rashiel’s suggestion is good, but let’s make 400% a constant – no fancy mechanics.

Piro Marella: Increases the damage of Shield Bash by 10 times your Block Chance. Reduces the Wrath cost of Shield Bash by 50%.

With all of the above treatments… your block chance can reach 115.5%, which makes it a 1155% damage buff. If you don’t take Justice Lantern, it’s 915% increased damage.

Today, my Shield Bash hits isolated enemies for ~6T (only Physical CoE) at 46K strength. With this buff, it’d strike enemies for ~61T.

Flail of the Ascended: Shield Glare deals 400% the damage of your last 15 Shield Bash casts.

Makes the Shield Glare nuke noticeably stronger, while spacing out the Bashes and Glares. In perfect conditions (Oculus+CoE), we’re talking 7-8Q nukes.

Final Witness: Shield Glare hits all enemies around you and always has 100% Critical Hit Chance.

This just removes another layer of RNG to help us see more consistent Shield Glares.

5 Likes
16

Prophet is 150% armor + cheat death, stone is 250% armor w/o cheat, once you reached sufficient EHP, you don’t need cheat death aka prophet. (EHP is effective HP)

What’s cindercoat RCR worth? It’s 50% x 28% x 30% with critical, which is 3.24 wrath reduction per hit. Not a significant amount to worth a core item spot.

What does attack speed got to do with SG?
It is only reduced while stoned.
The stone effect is due to poor skill rotation management, I haven’t seen properly geared / played Roland gets stoned.

There are many ways to sort resource issues. Unstoppable Force naturally fits captain set playstyles offering 50% RCR as well as 50% mitigation. Once Roland gets properly buffed, the critical 7.8% buff won’t be as preferred.

1 Like
17

In my point of view the less wrath u spend on shield bash the better it is for spamming the skill … i recommend u play high GR to notice how easy shield bash runs out on wrath, one more thing we should consider is the fact we dont have Embodiment of Power always active thats why i use cindercoat crumble

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18

Are you console player or PC player? Shouldn’t be too big of a difference, but it can be different? I have never played console. Its just that I dont see your profile on 3 servers that’s all.

I have never experienced wrath issues. I dont like SB too much, and deleted its version of gears after pushing/experience with SG spec. I ll refarm it and push a rank for you to see I guess. Maybe when this season is over, on NS.

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19

It won’t run out of wrath with Captain Crimson, Piro Marella and Laws of Valor:Unstoppable Force together.

Use Long arm of the Law passive and run high CDR +62%. It takes 66.66% to keep the law up permanently, but you don’t need to when you mix in Shield Glare:Zealous Glare, the resource recovery is there.

If you’re running Condemn:Vacuum, you can try swapping to Provoke:Hit Me, which also replenishes Wrath and boosts the damage of the Pound Rune if you happen to have decent block chance.

Block Sources Block % Pound W. Dmg % from Block Total W. Dmg % Damage Gain After Provoke Net Damage
Perfect Shield 20% 100 1420 0 1470 3.52%
Shield Block Chance % 31% 155 1475 3.87% 1552.5 9.33%
Hold You Ground 61% 305 1625 14.44% 1777.5 25.18%
Justice Lantern 76% 380 1700 19.72% 1890 33.10%

Realistically you’re trading the following:

  • Shield Affix: CDR → Block Chance %
  • Passive Skill: Holy Cause → Hold Your Ground
  • Active Skill: Condemn → Provoke

The way it computes, there’s no damage loss until you take Justice Lantern. There are very minor benefits in taking HYG over Holy Cause, like when you have 10% Damage on your weapon, etc. The build depth is like splitting hairs though, it doesn’t feel like you solved a problem, just maximized for +2% damage.

An alternative concept for Rolands

Shield Bash+Shield Glare becomes Sweep Attack+Shield Glare.

  • Drakon’s now supports Sweep Attack @ full 400% damage.
  • Flail of the Ascended now tallies Sweep Attack damage, with a 30 stack cap (6 seconds to build up).

Essentially playing meta Roland’s becomes Sweep Attack + Shield Glare. It could work well and feel less clunky than Shield Bash.

Food for thought.

2 Likes
20

people who plays with sweep atack they use the novaralds set with golden flense on the cube.

dont belive if they would change it to use the shield bash unless piro marella would boost sweep atack to

21

Denial + Golden Flense + Flail of the Ascended + Drakon’s Lesson – Done

1 Like
22

Maybe before during one of the seasons, but now they use denial + golden flense + optional.

Since they nerfed norvald’s on top of that i cant see them trade denial for norvald’s.

That said, i’d rather have sweep and shield bash seperate.

1 Like