Iso Bladeshield Sin Guide

[brokenstars]

I had found a Bladeshield guide a while ago, where the build (totally bm) focuses on bladeshield and the dmg from Grief Pb. Don't know if anyone here is familiar with the build or even has a link to a guide. Thanks.

[Master Zap]

I just looked around for that old guide I too seem to recall reading about back in the day. From my search I did find a few interesting things about bladeshield.


Bladeshield is vastly considered to be a one point wonder skill and only people who want a higher duration put more then 1 point into it, so I dont think a specific guide around 1 skill point is useful. Ive always used 1 point blade shield on my rift sins since this will proc the orbs.

It's also good to note that Bladeshield will leach nicely if you've lifetap on :yes:


I think Bladeshield is relegated to 1 point wonderness and simply recasting when it wears off. Mana is easy to recoup, skill points no so much, but there is a few weps this shines one. Grief, Rift, astrons, azurewrath for starters.

Here's some of the info from my search on this. (sure I wanted to help you, but truthfully, I just wanted to know for me :crazyeyes: )




* Blade Shield:



* Does 25% of the damage your active weapon does with a normal attack plus its base skill damage.
* While its attack speed does not seem to be effected by increase attack speed or faster casting rate items faster casting rate items will increase the speed at which you initially cast your Blade Shield.
* Will attack in all directions every 1 second or so as well as at the time of casting (so casting continuously will cause it to attack more frequently but who would do that?).
* Using this skill will wear down the durability of your weapon.
* Its attack range appears to be fixed regardless of your weapons range. Some creatures such as the lancer rouges in Act I will be able to attack from outside the range of your Blade Shield.
* The damage and properties used will change if you swap weapons or gear after casting.


Properties that do work with this skill:
* __Life/Mana steal
* __Ignore target defence (this should not work or at least as well on bosses and perhaps unique monsters as well)
* __any elemental damage
* __% extra gold from monsters
* __% better chance of getting magic items (likely since % extra gold works but can't really tell for certain)
* __% to cast on attack
* __+% damage to demons/undead
* __+Min/Max damage
* __deadly strike
* __critical strike
* __prevent monster heal


Properties that do not work with this skill:
* __+Life/Mana after kill
* __% to cast on strike
* __open wounds
* __cause monsters to flee
* __knock back
* __crushing blow
* __slows target
* __freezes target
* __blinds target
* __pierce target (Blade Shield could be said to already have 100% piercing so more makes no difference)



* Extra points here increase the duration by 5 seconds per skill level, the mana cost by 2 and the damage a little.
* For most builds this skill is not really worth getting or just worth one point if you already have Blade Fury, if you want it getting it off of a claw in your second weapon set may be the way to go.
* Only if you have a good bit of elemental damage from various sources including plenty in Venom, have claws with lots of physical damage, plenty of points in Claw Mastery and at least some of the usable properties will this be somewhat useful in Hell for melee assassins.
* While it can leech life and mana don't expect to leech much anything in Hell or even other difficulties.




So that's the general stuff on bshield.

Here's the thing, Blade Shield does benefit from the +damage of Grief (we're talking about the difference between doing a sliver of life damage to creatures on NM with grief not equipped, and 2 hit killing them with grief equipped), though you'd expect it to be the same as blade fury and sentinal. I'll run some tests this weekend to verify fury and sentinal again.

It's worth noting that, while CtC On Attack DOES work with BShield, it gets converted to CtC On Striking. In other words, it only has a chance to trigger when you successfully hit, so if your AR is abysmal, you'll never trigger.



The range of Blade Shield is fixed regardless of what weapon you have equipped. It's either range 3 or range 4 (I think range 4, but I forget exactly). Also, I can confirm that ctc on attack works with Blade Shield, but I'm of the opinion that it's not a viable build. It needs too much- AR, Survival gear for melee range, FCR, huge mana pool, and Rift itself. It's one of the few builds I've actually abandoned rather than finishing. :undecided:

I have yet to find a way to make Blade Shield Hell-viable (and believe me, I've tried). This is a big admission: so far, Blade Shield is the only skill I have tried to base a build around and failed (although I still have the project on a shelf and hope to complete it some day).





If you know about SSOG posts and characters, this is a guy who factually always has it down. Furthermore, he's famous for his "ugly" builds and if he didnt have the patience to finish one of these, I cant think of any mortals that would. (outside perhaps SuperDave)



good luck!

[mephiztophelez]

pre-1.10, when Crushing Blow and all those juicy mods were carried by Blade Shield, this was a viable build (it was known as the Shredder).

post 1.10, with the b-shield nerf: it just simply doesn't work anymore.

b-shield is best used by ww-sin's (with their high investment in Venom) as a little bit of "extra gravy" damage in PvP. the only time you're glad to have it is when getting tele-stomped by wind-druids with their wolves out (or by an Eternity wielding hammerdin)