[3.2] Spectral Shield Throw - Gladiator - Pure Phys
 INTRODUCTION Thanks for checking out my guide! I've played a ton of Diablo 2 and Diablo 3, and was super stoked to see the Spectral Shield Throw gem added in Bestiary! I heard early on that the damage was really low, but it seemed fine for me leveling so I wanted to see if I could make it work! Edit: Thank you all for the amazing support you've given me! I've had multiple people message me with other build suggestions and tips! I've updated the build with new armor choices, new skill gems, and most importantly a new path of building. Check that out if you'd like a detailed breakdown of my skills, items, and passives. https://pastebin.com/gSWFAcxv Current Currency Cost: ~100c Keep in mind that things like my gripped gloves and steel ring are optional, and not mandatory! See the gear section for cheaper alternatives for starting! Last Edit for a while - I'm blown away by how many people have commented and viewed this guide, so thank you all for that! I'm actually about to head to the Galapagos to work on a nature conservation for a month, so I won't be replying or editing at all. I haven't tested this build out endgame at all, but it was a really fun low-mid tier mapper, and I transitioned into playing a poets pen VD build for higher maps. I wouldn't go phys anymore in the league, the Ele. version is very strong, but I think that early in the league this is a great starter and currency farmer. Anyway, thank you guys again so much, it's been awesome seeing so many people helping each other out in the comments! Abbreviations I'll be using: SST = Spectral Shield Throw OVERVIEW Pros: + Good Clearspeed + Easy/Cheap to Gear + Reliable Bossing + Super Tanky via Blocking Cons: - Damage is not INSANE - Not a lot of Guides or Info SKILL TREE Ascendancy: Gladiator Passive Tree Edit: Swapped a couple nodes for the Point Blank Passive Node on the tree. Edit Edit; After a bunch of testing and suggestions from everyone (ty guys so much!) I've updated my tree and my path of building link. We're up to 160kdps on a 5 (pseudo 6) link so thanks a ton guys! Ascendancy Points: 1). Blood In the Eyes 2). Gratuitous Violence 3). Painforged 4). Violent Retaliation Bandits: Kill All for +2 Passives SKILL TREE EXPLANATION Passive Tree Duelist is a great starting spot for this build. We have access to plenty of life to the left or us, as well as the large cluster of life near scion. We have access to 4 Jewel nodes, which is a fair number but not insane. Grab any bleed nodes once you've swapped into Brutality, probably around level 45-50. This sets you up well for the 2nd set of Lab points into Gratuitous Violence nicely. I also grabbed Berserking near the life cluster until I had decent attack speed from other sources. JEWELS Poacher's Aim: I use this because not only do you get it early on for free, but the Projectile's Pierce an additional time is very valuable for clear speed. Rare Jewels: Look for Global Physical, Projectile Damage, Attack Speed, Attack Speed While Holding a Shield, Physical Damage While Holding a Shield, Bleed Damage/Durration, all in that order. For Defense try for %Life and Resistances. SKILL DPS Buffed DPS  Hideout DPS  DEFENSE Flasked Defense  GEAR GEAR EXPLANATION
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Weapon
Main Hand Weapon for SST is a really interesting choice. While leveling before I swapped into Brutality, I used The Princess. The %Added Elemental Damage is very very nice, functionally a 30% damage buff while leveling. End Game, (Edited) I swapped to a Prismatic Eclipse with 2 green sockets. The attack speed and physical damage is amazing for movement and damage. Brightbeak is also a good option for the insane attack speed. Aurumvorax is also a good option for a cheap resistance stat stick. Off-Hand -Our Offhand is the most important item we have, because it's essentially our main weapon. -Armor and Evasion give you the most damage. Look for the highest Armor, Armor+Evasion you can. -Essense crafting and Haku can amazing early on. -Once you begin mapping focus on getting the highest armor rolls you can. -Tower Shields are the BiS. -If Lioneye's is cheaper than rares in the same armor range, you might want to pick one up. Helm -Abyssus is BiS for dps but is dangerous to run early on. -Rare with Life and Res. is a good alternative. Chest While leveling, any chest with decent life and resists is fine. -Lioneye's Vision is a huge DPS increase due to free lvl 15 Pierce. -Saves us 2 passives via mana leech. -This is a highly under-rated item right now, and you should pick one up while they're still cheap.Even a 4 link will let you do mid tier maps fairly easily! Gloves -Rare Gripped Gloves with Flat Phys and Attack Speed are BiS. -In the meantime, Meginord's are a good alternative. Edit: I've been messing Around with Haemophilia gloves, and they make our clearspeed way faster than Meginord's, and they are about the same on single target, definitely suggest these before the Gripped Gloves. Boots -Dont need %Move Speed once you rely on Shield Charge. -Just get life and 3 res on boots. Amulet -Look for Flat Phys, Life, Resists, and any stats you need for Gems. -Blasphemy is really the only int. gem I use, so get however much int. you need to make the radius feel comfortable for you. Edit: End Game it will be best to use Impresence but it's very expensive for the physical version, so until then make due with what you can! Rings -Steel Rings are BiS. Until then, just look for flat phys on w/e base. -Flat Phys, Life, Resists, and stats here. Belt -At 48, buy "The Magnate" belt and a "The Great Leader of the North" prophecy to make yourself "The Nomad". -One of my only Recommended unique items. -Large DPS increase. -Has 20+ Resist all Flasks LINKS AND GEMS Main DPS Setup SST is a Physical Projectile Attack, and can scale with gems that apply to projectiles and attacks, but not melee attacks. That's important to know, and why we don't use melee physical damage and instead use Iron Grip. While Leveling, it's definitely worth replacing Iron Grip with Faster Attacks. Once you get enough strength on gear and in your passive tree (for me around level 45) you'll want to recolor your sockets and swap into Iron Grip. If you can sustain full life most of the time, damage on full life is a great gem to swap for Iron Grip (take that passive on the tree if you do). Faster Projectiles and Fork are both great for clear speed, but take up a gem slot that might be used for more damage, so it's up to you! Also remember that at lvl 70 we get a free link to lvl 15 pierce with Lioneye's Vision. It's not only a 15% more damage modifier but gives us another source of Pierce which helps our shattered shield projectiles clear much more reliably. It's not worth subbing in pierce as a gem before that however. CWDT Setup -Pretty Standard CWDT. -I use Stone Golem for a little more health regen. Mobility Setup Shield Charge is an amazing movement skill, and is perfect to proc our fortify which gives us a big toughness buff! We're charging in anyway to benefit from our curse aura, so it's pretty much a free buff. Procs Onslaught in packs surprisingly well. Aura Setup Drop when you get Brutality: Once you transition into Brutality, you'll want to drop Herald of Ash and just have Vulnerability supported. Not sure what to put in the free slot, if you can find a way to get double curse you could use Warlords or Poacher's Mark for some more leech/charge generation. Ancestral Protector Unavailable LEVELING Leveling early on is pretty easy, I just used Molten Strike with Ancestral Call until I got SST. Using Hatred and The Princess early on is a huge damage increase. Once you can not run out of mana a lot, add in Herald of Ash for even better AoE and Single Target damage. Any Iron Rings are also great for damage. The clearing speed of SST was super nice and smooth. You don't have to use Molten Strike, any beginning duelist strategy will work fine with the early skill tree. While Leveling I didn't use Brutality Support and that let me abuse Hatred and Herald of Ash for the %Phys damage added as additional %Ele damage. GAMEPLAY VIDEOS I've got videos on the way today, in the meantime feel free to check out my twitch at twitch.tv/psdoug315 THE END Thanks for Reading! Any tips/edits feel free to comment and let me know! I know it's not a complete build by any means, but it's feeling good so far! Here's my Path of Building with my Goal Passives and current gear if anyone wants it! Edit: New Pastebin for PoB with updated Passives - https://pastebin.com/gSWFAcxv Edit: I like the idea of getting rid of blasphemy and using Vulnerability in the CWDT to proc it. My concern is that I kill most packs before they hit me and I'd lose that damage. I'll test it out and let you guys know! I'd love to move into blood magic but might wait for impresense amulet :) Last edited by psdoug315 on Apr 4, 2018, 5:55:52 PM Last bumped on Aug 28, 2018, 10:03:59 AM
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Cool Thread
Couple of Questions: Why not pick up the Iron Grip and Point Blank Keystones? Seems like they would be naturals for this. The Iron Grip would free up a slot in your main attack. Point Blank would be a nice boost on damage especially for the splinters that would hit things right out of the gate. | |
" Great question! I thought the same thing about Iron Grip on the passive tree, so I took it and swapped my skills around, first subbing in chance to bleed and then attack speed. Neither one of them did as much dps and it's because the Iron Grip Gem has a ~30% damage buff on it, and the node doesn't. A problem I ran into was actually the number of support gems that effected the skill. When you go pure physical, but the skill is not a melee attack, you run out of support gems that add value very quickly. And for point blank, that's a great pointer there! I had only messed with the gem but not the actual passive! and for 3 passives it's a great pickup, I'll add that right away :) | |
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I'd love to see a video of this in action.
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" Hey! Thanks for the request, I threw together a quick stream and uploaded it, gotta upload it somewhere other than YouTube to embed it, but here's the link for it in the meantime! https://youtu.be/HGUp8qoMJVk | |
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How we craft high armour tower shield?
I bought an ilvl 79 elder base collosal tower shield. (White). Last edited by Balantakos on Mar 7, 2018, 7:59:43 AM
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Very interesting!
Although I think that I will go for Iron grip skill anyway and use faster projectile support. | |
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Hi there!
I've been playing SST gladiator since league started. I guess we both based on the same idea found somewhere in the internet. At the moment I'm 85lvl and after a lot of experiments with gems and passives I'm amazed how much I like that gameplay. I'd like to share it with u. So, few ideas from me: Weapon.
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I tried both - Brightbeak and Prismatic Eclipse with 3g sockets. The 2nd choice is way better. Bonus to attack speed (not only to movement) is huge. Also I'm using Blood Rage (there is no degen with our physical reduction/hp regen) so attack speed with 3 frenzy charges is satisfying also for shield charge. Anyway, Brightbeak can be bettter for speedfarm with late game items. I'm still running with Tabula and items worth few chaoses so hard to say :)
Armor.
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I must say that I didn't think about Lioneye's Vision. And I like that idea. Soon I'm gonna give it a try (depends on the amount of fuses I'll need). 7-link seems nice.
Gloves.
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Imo BiS rare gloves for that build are Gripped Gloves. Projectile damage as an implict, flat physical, life, resists and attack speed. But... It's not so cheap choice.
Boots.
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As u said that build doesn't need movement speed. Kaom's Roots seems like a nice idea.
The rest of ideas are almost like mine ;) So that's about the gear. Gems.
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My setup:
1) SST 2) Physical Projectile Attack Damage Support - Damage boost 3) Brutality - Damage boost 4) Fork Support - Way more better than Chain Support. Tried both and with Fork our SST looks like... Tornado shot. 2 more main projectiles and 2 times more shards. I must try it also with pierce. 5) Faster Projectiles Support - For me it's most important gem for clearspeed together with Fork. The faster our projectiles are the bigger distance they can reach. Easy offscreen clear confirmed. Especially with our bleed+explosion. 6) Faster Attack Support - not so important but works fine Also need to test instead of Faster Attack Support: 6a) Damage on Full Life Support - even more damage 6b) Slower Projectiles Support - for bosses I think that's all I wanted to share... I have almost the same tooltip damage like u. U can check my tree on my profile. There is some differences but as I said - I'm still testing and learning. I'm not sure about Point Blank (maybe for late game bosses) but Iron Grip and Resolute Technique are must have for me. Keep up the good work with guide and thank you for few nice ideas. That skill is not so bad like most of people think. | |
" Thanks so much for all of the great info! Damage on full life support is a great idea, I'll see what that dps looks like if I swap it for the Iron Grip Gem! I played around with Fork, and I didn't like that half the time 1 shield bounced off into nowhere, but that's probably just personal preference xD I'll definitely give prismatic a go, I'm sure the attack speed is nice, and I've definitely got room in my rares for the resists still. Gripped Gloves with good rolls are probably BiS, but yesterday I experimented with Haemophilia and LOVE them. I'll be updating the guide for them today, the increased damage is nice but not crazy, but the additional bleed explosion% has made a noticeable difference for my clearspeed. And thanks for the advice about faster projectiles, I'll probably sub that in when I get my 6 link, especially if I'm dropping Iron Grip Gem for full life... probably take some more leech nodes for full life too so we stay topped off. Anyway thanks again for the amazing comment :) <3 | |
" U're right. But thanks to projectile's speed there is a very nice chance that this 'lost' shield will hit next group of mobs. In closed areas it's deadly. Not to mention possibility to shotgun bosses. Chain is much more accurate but need to be swaped for boss fights. Anyway, I totally forgot that pierce doesn't work with fork. Theoretically. Just tested fork+pierce and it looks that there is no shards from the initial hit but only after fork. So very bad setup for open areas and bosses. Edit: I was wrong. 1st hit is w/o shards becouse of fork. Last edited by eonwe12 on Mar 7, 2018, 7:41:19 PM
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