[3.15] General's Cry Shield Charge/Shield Crush

Hi Everyone,

I'm currently running chieftain / consecrated path version of Generals Cry but would love to try this one out eventually.

Couple Questions: why use unearth in trigger weapon? Wouldn't a curse / extra curse chest be optimal and easy to fit in? Unearth does lackluster damage and we get plenty of corpses from desecrate already. Doing this you could drop Asenath and run an Assassin's mark ring with punishment / vulnerability cast in the weapon (or poacher's mark, not sure what would be best).

Does anyone have a GG shield for sale? Seems the majority on the market are pretty shitty (nearest shield with warcry CD is only 2500 armor).

Final Question: since it is somewhat tough against bosses and general mapping to get enemies in Pride range for long enough, would Herald of Purity be a good substitute? I currently have a double precision watcher which will probably offer comparable damage to a +2 impale pride watcher's eye and Herald phys multi is always active regardless of where you are personally. Sure it would give you less dps than pride, but it might allow you to fit in flesh and stone + maim to make up the difference. Since Mana isn't really an issue with the rings, we would probably just need a single 1% reduced mana jewel or even just 1 or 2 levels lower on our precision gem to fit both FaS+maim / Herald.

According to my PoB, that new set up offers more or the same dps as a full effect Pride set up and immediately active rather than dealing with a 4 second ramp up. Of course, if you can get a dual Precision / Pride watcher then this would probably fall off but those are expensive af.

Yes, a lot of it isn't optimal, its just what I happened to be using at the time. Theres no extra curse because the cheap harvest explode chest didn't have it on it and I never bothered to update it. Asenath was more of me testing them out more than anything.

unearth is there just to increase the odds of a corpse being near you when mapping very very quickly, and spread corpses around during a boss with a large fighting area. just a personal preference on how it feels.

RIP harvest, is all I gotta say on the shield question.

yes, different reservation configurations work. just more preference. The damage scales up to ridiculous numbers, I personally stopped caring about minmaxing even more when I could do each phase of sirus with my eyes closed holding down cry.

are you sure explody chest works with general cry's mirages? They don't count as "you" so any on kill effect (explody, herald of ash explosion/burn, etc wont work). I've tried with and without explody and I dont notice the difference.

It does not. explody is for you to proc; not the generals.

Hi there Skippy!

I just want to thank you for doing your write up on Shield Charge General Cry. I love playing shield charge builds and the idea of having a shield charge army seems really appealing. With the buffs to shield charge in 3.13, I could see people picking this up and running with it since it is a boss league and shield boys will probably be very effective in that arena.

I haven't tried your build, but I'm keeping an eye on it. I'd have really loved to see a video of it in action. I'm interested in that explode question since it really helps with clear. Was it able to handle t16 deliriums?

The damage scales up so high that even the weak 5 link self cast shield charge that isn't getting any of the exert buffs that it can kill even the strongest white mobs without the generals help once you get enough gear; add in the physical damage clusters plus a few of the tree nodes, and explode can pop most packs easily despite explode only working on self cast;; generals being used to auto target anything left over. Shield charge just does so much damage with a 3k armor shield, even more so in 3.13. I haven't used the build since 3.11; I might do another version after my league starter in 3.13.

I played this again in 3.13. I enjoy the play style. Many thanks for posting the original build.

I wanted to share a new 3.13 option for the build. It can be played as inquisitor with essentially all the same non-ascendency passives as recommended in the guide. The damage seems comparable to berserker but the survivability is better--more EHP with elemental ailment immunity and 1-2k regen depending on gear.

The build can still focus on physical damage stacking. It gets a lot of bonus from just a few slots with % of physical as extra elemental damage. An inquisitor ascendency ignores target elemental resist on crit and the build can get 100% or near 100% crit.

POB: https://pastebin.com/scBFYTN9

for 3.15 the same general setup should work; some things have been nerfed since, like explody; while other buffed, like a Shield Crush being an option and even better damage scaling. Might go back to this later in the league; otherwise I hope this guide is a good starting point for what a shield build might look like.

Looking for build like this for very long, will you update also the POB please with those nerfs in 3.15?

Gotta keep track on this with the patch notes tmrw, seems very interesting.