I used a proxy shield with roughly same stats as new Unique since its not in the planner yet.
I decided to spec into Focus to deal continuous AoE lightning damage as well.
If you are talking about Thorn Shield, that is in the Ice Thorns tree.
I still don’t think there is enough flat damage reflect. At the high end you can get up to 400 (including legendaries). If you get up to 100 Attunement, you get 600% increased damage reflected. That is still only 2800 damage reflected. Pretty weak compared to a lot of builds hits.
Just wondering (not bashing your build):
What is the reason that you have chosen Mage over Druid with reflect?
It seems to me like Druid is the more natural reflect option, especially in the new patch.
Because of the thorns nodes in the druid etc combined with the new unique.
Well, first, this was before the full patch notes, new shield, etc.
Second, in Last Epoch, “% reflect” only reflects the final damage dealt to you, so if you reduce damage to yourself, you reflect way less damage. So my idea was to TAKE as much damage as I can without dying. I decided Ward (with super-high ward gain) was one path to simply get hit/take damage but stay alive.
But now that we have the patch notes, and more sources of flat reflect (which doesn’t care how much damage you mitigate), I will work on some new builds.
You may want to try a Spriggan form character that spams Thorn Shield (for flat reflect and an pbscene amount of armour). I’ll share the build I tried when everything’s released.