opinions on "Um" Whitstan's Guard?

[Rastaputin]

intended to be used on a pure cold sorc (blizzer/blaster). i'm leaning towards whitstans and um. other equip: 35 vipermagi, faceted occy, um'd harlequin crest, 25light/17cold nat's soul, and fire/light/shimmering charms to fill in the gaps will be my other sources of resistances. rest of gear is + skills

does anyone have an opinion on this matter that they'd like to share?

i have all of the other shields to choose from (using "Ort" lidless atm, but hating the low block %). i have perfect diamonds, socket quests, and um runes, also lem and ko runes to upgrade exceptional shields to elite.

[melianor]

If you only have that 1 UM, i would rather recommend socketin it into your Vipermagi and just put 1 PDiamond into your Whistans.
Especially since you cant put Pdiamonds into an armor for increased resistances.
All in all with Pdiamond in Whistans and UM in Vipermagi you will get more resistances that way. Might be interesting to aquire a Vipermagi that is worth the UM, meaning it should have 30+ Allres on it. Perfect Vipermagi+Um=+50 allres just from that armor.

Edit: Just saw you seem to have multiple UMs. Well then, 1xUM into Whistans, 1xUm Vipermagi.
Better Shield than Whistans would be upgraded Visceratuant with +1 skills, faster block, and increased chance of block. upg. Visceratuant has 77str req and 72% block. Dexterity required for maxblock is higher too.

[Rastaputin]

i've got 6 um runes, and i don't mind putting one in whitstans and one in vipermagi, that is if i decide that it's my end-game armour/shield setup.

about up'd visc - so i'd lose a bit of vitality but gain +1 skills, faster block rate. sounds like a good trade.

[melianor]

i've got 6 um runes, and i don't mind putting one in whitstans and one in vipermagi, that is if i decide that it's my end-game armour/shield setup.

about up'd visc - so i'd lose a bit of vitality but gain +1 skills, faster block rate. sounds like a good trade.

I'd rate upg. Visceratuant better than Whistans. Its good blocking shield, infact the only one that will give you +1 skills and still does not cost a large amoutn of dexterity points to achieve max-block.

Use the Shield on all my builds. The only other option would be Stormshield, but i am rather not the type to invest 130+ str on my sorc builds ;), though the Shield is certainly a very good blocking shield.

[Rastaputin]

Use the Shield on all my builds.

cool - thanks for your help, that's what i'll go for.