Shield Throw Questions

Sentinel
1

Hello! My name is AgtShadow. Very new to LE though I’ve played my share of arpgs. (This is my 3rd one this month, best by far!) Highest char so far is a 49-50 Pally. I reached the End of Time (mid-20’s) and started running Monoliths. It’s been fun, but…

Last night my world was rocked when I realized that my plan to roll up a VK Shield Thrower (inspired by BoardMan’s build) was fraught with issues. This is the first arpg I’ve seen where there are no dedicated throwing weapons AND your melee weapon stats don’t intrinsically transfer to throwing skills. (So weird!!!)

Here’s what I used from 15-25: A 2h sword with +70% phys dmg. That seemed to work. Now I’m trying to swap to 1h + shield (sounds better) and the plethora of different modifiers is driving me crazy.

AFFECTS ERUPTION: (1) +adaptive; (2) +spell dmg (of any type); (3) +% inc spell; (4) non-melee +fire (I think that’s only +% fire); (5) +% elemental; and (6) a stat.

AFFECTS SHIELD THROW: (1) non-melee phys dmg modifiers (I think that’s only +% phys); (2) non-melee fire dmg modifiers? (I just now noticed the fire tag); (3) throwing mods (all of ‘em!); (4) str & dex (per tooltip).

QUESTIONS
Q1: Which stat affects eruption damage? (Int or Attunement?)

Q2: I just noticed the fire tag on the shield throw skill. Does this mean the Molten Shield node (shield throw dmg --> fire dmg and stun from tree --> ignite) is almost redundant? Does Molten Shield nullify the physical tag? (Phys mods no longer affect shield throw?) Does +% fire automatically affect eruption AND shield throw?

Q3: How does the idol that converts shield throw dmg to void work? I assume it doesn’t affect eruption. Does it essential nullify the fire and physical tags? Would it overwrite Molten Shield? Do I need this idol as a VK? (I have one.) Else the VK passive (10% chance to echo) doesn’t work, right?

Q4: At what point does +% throwing dmg overtake flat +throwing dmg? (I really wish I could see my shield throw dmg somewhere so I could easily test this one.)

Q5: It seems like throwing mods would be awesome (they apply at +200% so that’s 3x the effect!), but I don’t see any guides gearing like this. Er, why?

Q6: How on Earth do I gear this?

POSSIBLE OPTIONS:
(a) Gear for eruption and ignore shield throw itself. (This looks like what BoardMan was doing.) Could also equip the idol to convert shield throw to void dmg (yay VK passives).

(b) Take Molten Shield (do I need to?) and gear for +% fire and +% elemental. Should affect both equally.

© Gear for shield throw and ignore eruption. This one has sub-options.

(c1) Go for throwing dmg modifiers. Use Riverbend Grasp (which I have).
(c2) Go for +% phys dmg.
(c3) Use idol to convert to void dmg (which looks like it would combo very well with being a VK). Go for +% void dmg. (I don’t know if these shards are rare, but I don’t have any of them yet.)

I know I’m leveling and NOT talking end-game, but I think my questions/options still apply. I’d love to hear from folks more knowledgeable than me.

Thank you for your help!

2

Q1: Hold alt down over eruption and you will see what affect eruption :slight_smile:
Q2: Because, you have the molten shield tag that convert shield throws base physical damage to fire, it have changed the tag on shield throw, and it now states fire. And yes, fire% increased now affect shield throw. You do not need to convert shiled throws dmg, to make eruption get affected by %increase fire dmg. Eruption, should be seens as a seperate skill, and affected by different things than shield throw.

Q3: Any converted dmg, only convert the base dmg of the skill, and what you can take in the passive tree. Any sources outside of the skill, does not get converted.

Throwing attacks, does not work with Echoe.

Q4: Well it’s a difficult question. The best way i can describe it is, that you need to balance your stats out.

If you look at stats as values, they should look like 3x3x3x3 and no 1x1x1x8. Haha i dont know if that makes sense.

Q5: Well the reason why, is because as i stated in Q4, you need to balances your stats out. Increase % damage, is a very easy stat to get. And you can get it from many sources, thats why you in general, does not scale it on gear. But take what you can get from passives, and support skills.

Q6: Depends on what route you going to take. Shield throw can be build in two ways. the Throwing damage, and spell version, where you use eruption and smite.

(a): Problably the strongest option. what i have been playing myself. i love it. This type of build, also get affected by weaopen, since staff/wands increase eruptions damge.

(b): You do not need to take molten shield, if you choose to make the eruption build.

(c): This is an option to. But requires better gear. Since most of you damage, will come from the flat damage, you can get on items.

Lastly: I would like to reccomend my damage guide. Damage guide for beginners (completed) - HolyCoffee, a lot of your questions above, is better answered in my guide :slight_smile:

2 Likes
3

I see you Llama8 haha :smiley:

4

Attunement (if you hover over the Eruption node & hold alt it gives you some more info.

No, damage type is independent to ailments (stun, ignite, etc). You can ignite with a cold skill & if you have 0 ignite chance a fire skill won’t ignite.

Correct, it just changes the damage type to void, so it can then benefit from +% void damage & idols that reduce the mana cost of void skills. Yes, it takes precedence over Molten Shield. The Shield Throw can’t echo as it’s not a melee or spell.

Not sure since we can’t know the base shield damage.

If you’re going for hit damage, yes, they would be.

Eruption is awesome since it’s hit is counted separately to the Shield Throw hit & can therefore proc anything (life on hit, future strikes, ignite, stun, etc) twice on the target hit. Personally I tend to go for using Shield Throw (+ Eruption) to proc various effects, be that future strikes, poison or ignite.

1 Like
5

:stuck_out_tongue: I can’t type & play World War Z at the same time.

6

ahahaha goddammit. So if you were not playing World War Z, your response would have been faster, and i dindt have to answer! I blame that game then :smiley: Going all out with fancy quotes and all that shit, i cant compete with that :laughing:

1 Like
7

Really? How did you work that out? It’s a bit disappointing if true. :frowning:

8

Thank you very much, both of you! Much obliged!!!

I think the most confusing point for me is that I can’t see my shield throw damage. That makes it so much harder to compare equipment and consider pros & cons.

1 Like
9

I have seen it beeing confirmed on discord. But you could say for spells, it’s not a big deal, since they have change staff/wands implicit to adaptive spell damage. But for throwing and melee, it’s a bit more difficult.

The only reason why you would convert, is because you want to scale the skill with a specific type of %increase dmg. Like increase void damage %.

But i dont know. Flat damage on skills, is quite low - is my understanding. Warpaths flat damage is 1, if i remember correctly, lightning blast flast damage is 16 or something. The reason why they are so low, is because the skills flat damage, does not scale with your lvl. Only trough the passives you take in the skill.

10

Yea i understand! It’s not super easy. Tooltips will come down the road though :slight_smile:

11

I, too, struggled a lot with gearing for and building a shield throw sentinel. While playing through the story this skill was superb, no matter what route I took. With endgame the damage fell off really quickly.

For me the spell version was a lot easier to build. And it looks really nice when you hammer out shieldthrow like a machine gun procing smite all over the screen.

If you ever decide to play a Forge Guard, there is another nasty way to make a shieldthrow build:

  • Go for forge strike and take the nodes on the top right to increase proc chance of forged weapons. These are animated swords and axes that count as minions
  • Go for Manifest Armor and take the route on the top/middle left to make the Armor spin when hit by your shield throw
  • Then for shield throw you take the “ricochets to allies”

Now when your manifest armor is up and alive your ring of shields and the forged weapons both will be hit by shield throw and also perform the spin attack from your manifest armor

In Arena you can easily get 20+ forged weapon minions that all spin when you hit them with your shield throw. I changed the build before the 0.7.7 patch because of performance issues. But it really was very nice.

Maybe no option for you as a VK… but if you ever want to build a Forge Guard you would like it, I swear :laughing:

When you go down the spell route with eruption an smite there’s a neat little mechanic that also is really nice and @marc7694 explained in one of his videos: Future Strike has the same chance to proc smite as a throwing attack, as long as it is applied by a throwing attack. This means you can get 2 smite procs with a single hit of shield throw. 1 of the shield hit and one from the future strike hit. This is all linked to your smite chance with throwing attacks idol.

And another “tip” for shield throw that a long time was not obvious to me: when you aim for a group of enemies you should always aim at the ones in the last row. The shield starts to ricochet when it hits the target you aimed at. All other enemies that stand in front of your target the shield flies through, does not ricochet but it hits them, applying procs and damage. This way you could hit a whole group of enemies before the shield begins to ricochet and may hit these enemies again with the ricochets.

Maybe this already was obvious because it’s in the skill description. But it took a while for me to notice. So just in case :grin:

12

I saw Llama’s FG Shield Throw build. Even though FG has a number of throwing passives, it bothers me a little to see that it’s suggested you ignore the top tier passives in the FG tree. I think the VK at least offers some top tier options that mesh.

The VK passive Void Bolts adds throwing void dmg and spell void dmg. If I spec into this and add spell void dmg to Lava Burst (from Eruption), will Lava Burst then be able to trigger the inherent VK echo?

I see others speccing into Echo (Echoing Strikes) towards the top of the VK tree. How does Shield Throw trigger it? The tooltip for Echo says melee attacks and void spells. Shield Throw and Lava Burst are neither.

13

That’s because I wasn’t going for hit damage (as I mentioned above), I was using Shield Throw to apply Future Strikes. If you do want to go for hit damage then you, you would absolutely take the passive nodes that add flat damage. That said, it depends on whether you want to be able to spam Shield Throw, as from memory taking the nodes that remove the cooldown also reduce the damage.

As I mentioned above, Shield Throw can’t echo as it’s a Throwing Attack, which is a separate skill type to Melee & Spells (which can be echoed). If you were going Void Knight, you’d probably be using Devouring Orb as well which would be echoed (and can do very good damage).

It’s an interesting question regarding whether the Eruption node can be echoed & it’s not something I’ve tried. I’d suspect it probably wouldn’t be echoed since Lava Burst isn’t a spell you can cast directly. If you use Shield Throw to proc Smite I don’t think the Smite can be echoed as the player isn’t casting it directly.

14

My inexperience with VKs - I forgot about Devouring Orb. I guess all the Echo passives at the top of the tree are meant for that skill.

Since the wording for Echo says “void spell,” I think it only applies to, well, void spells - abilities with those tags. So Echo might actually be limited only to VK abilities. Which stinks unless those are your big focus.

Throwing really feels like the red-headed stepchild of Sentinels. FG has 3 nodes >= 25 that refer to throwing. VK has 0 nodes (which is even worse than it sounds since Echo doesn’t apply). Pal has 3 (the 2 bleed nodes & 1 crit node). Two of the FG nodes are oriented around crit (ugh) and the other one only triggers when you’re hit. Pal has one more node at the very top for fire damage - that looks interesting.

Now I’m tempted to retool my Pal (who was going Vengeance/block) or make another Pal (more likely) to try out a fire/ignite/bleed Shield Throw build (taking Molten Shield). That top tier Pal node (Light of Rahyeh) is +7% fire dmg per point. There’s Conviction at the very bottom for fire penetration. And I’d have the Pal Aura. I know endgame is mostly about survival, but all of those sound pretty convincing to me.

15

Not just that skill, but it is a very useful one.

No, from memory it also echoes (echos?) Smite.

Yeah, I’ve made a few posts about how they could change Throwing Attacks to give them more support.

Yeah, I’ve got an ignite Shield Throw Paladin & there’s so much ignite chance you can get (plus bleed converted to ignite with Maehlin’s Hubris) as well as the numerous uniques that support ignite.

16

Thanks for all the info! I think I have my new goal (and I already have 2 of those uniques - woot!).

If you take Molten Shield, does ignite get 2 rolls to apply - 1 on the shield throw and 1 more on Eruption? If true, that sounds like fun.

17

Yes, they count as separate hits (as I think I mentioned above), so everything is rolled twice, leech, chance to poison/ignite/etc, life on hit (Forge Guard’s Regenerator node).

Plus Shield Throw is a bit odd as it is quite happy to travel through mobs (hitting & Erupting on them) before it ricochets, so the actual amount of hits/AoE coverage you get is far higher than the number of ricochets.

18

Quick-ish update. I started another Sentinel (3rd one now) for shield throwing. Made this guy a Pal and I specced into shield throw fire dmg pretty early (around level 22-24 or so, right after finishing out the rapid fire shield throw section).

He feels MUCH better than the VK. I know part of it is that I’m choosing passives more intelligently (or at least with a better focus on my goal) and another part is that I’m geared more intelligently, but I really like how he’s performing compared to the VK at this same point (and with the same gear). Shield Throw is simply hitting much harder.

On top of this, I know how to gear this guy: (1) +% fire & +% ele (equally useful); (2) +% spell; and (3) +throw. Stat-wise, I prefer Attunement for dmg & resists. I figure I’ll probably snag some or all of the Attunement in the Pal tree (at least the bottom 8 points). I’m also taking the fire passives in Shield Throw to boost ignite % and fire dmg. Same with Aura.

Everything is clearer.

I haven’t decided yet whether or not to push block % on this guy. I’d swap +24% dmg for +5% block (Sentinel) and then I’d get more % block in the Pal tree and FG (very eventually). Not sure if it’s worth it since I’m not taking the ward on block in the Aura tree (or maybe I should?). Beyond getting Vit for resists and armor for phys, I have little idea what to do about defense and whether or not I should focus on block %. (I know about set GB, set ele res, and CS reduction at higher levels.)

19

One of the mastery bonuses Paladins get is increased physical & fire damage based on hp remaining, so that’s why Shield Throw is hitting harder.

If you’re going for % spell & attunement then that will only buff the AoE, not the initial hit (though if you get an idol that procs Smite on throwing hit they will benefit Smite as well).

Sooner or later you’ll get to the point where defences are more important than damage. Plus Shield Throw has a node that increases damage based on block chance. Block is good when you have a decent amount as blocked hits use the block protection/armour + your normal protection so you take quite a bit less damage from a blocked hit.

20

Aye, I’m aware that Attunement only buffs the Eruption part (and Smite - once I’m ready to run 1+ of those idols). The Pal tree doesn’t have straight %dmg, only stats, melee, and certain niche things (like bleed and fire). I wish the bottom left node for +melee fire dmg was melee AND thrown. That would round out the tree nicely - there’s plenty of melee stuff (particularly lower down) but little thrown in comparison.

I think you’ve convinced me to include block. I’ll respec my Sentinel nodes and figure it in moving forward. I guess I should then push for the block nodes in Aura? That ward on block one is insane!