Is Duriel's Shell Cuirass woth upgrading for a Frenzier? der=0>

[thewoodshed]

I just downed Meph, pretty easily. IIRC Act 4 is when things start to get hairy. My set up is decent (not godly, but good enough to down Meph without drinking a pot) so I want to do an armor check.

I have 3 possible choices right now:

Duriels's Shell- I can upgrade this. Love the resists.

Leviathan (currently riding my merc). Massive def and + str PLUS DR%

Black Hades...That's a "meh" for me, so tell me if I am missing anything.

Thanks,
Ted

EDIT: ya know, I just realize that this toon fell off the ladder, so I can't upgrade..

[Spankeh]

Duriels's Shell is ok for nightmare - but hell its lacking.
Increasing its defense by upgrading will help but only in a minor way.
IMO Chains Of Honour is the allround best for frenzy because of +skills strength LL and %damage reduction +damage demons and undead.
Fortitude is good because of damage and defense, and using 2x Heart of the oak, will get you faster cast rate.
Meh... find a better armor than Duriels's Shell.

[thewoodshed]

Duriels's Shell is ok for nightmare - but hell its lacking.
Increasing its defense by upgrading will help but only in a minor way.
IMO Chains Of Honour is the allround best for frenzy because of +skills strength LL and %damage reduction +damage demons and undead.
Fortitude is good because of damage and defense, and using 2x Heart of the oak, will get you faster cast rate.
Meh... find a better armor than Duriels's Shell.

Thanks spankeh but those runewords are not an option. So woulx you take Leviathan over the other two?

[Spankeh]

yeah Leviathan is ok, but youll need some resists for it.
try an um rune if you can find it, to put in its socket, or an all resist jewel, with life as a second mod.
with arreats, try the same for its socket aswell

[thewoodshed]

I should clarify that this is basically an untwinked toon and new a account. My access to the things you are suggesting is limited. I have metric ton of pgems and junk jewels to trade bh the pending release of D3 has basically halted trade a activity. I go with Levi..

[Krupa]

if i had the choice between those three it would come down to this:

if you have cbf and ow somewhere else, black hades for extra bang against demons and three open sockets for random ed jewels or resistances

if you need cbf or lack resistances duriesl. it is a very endgame capable armor. not sure if i would want to spend a ko and a lem to upgrade, when i could use that for treachery...

leviathan is nice but is beaten by the other two imo

but if you have runes spare to upgrade think about the following runeword armors:

treachery: ias, fade (resistances and 15% dr!!) and venom to stop monsters from regenerating. a very good choice for a frenzier
lionheart: ed, stats, life, res. nice package for a cheap price

for the following u might not have the runes
duress: ed, res, cb, ow and cold damage to slow them (might shatter corpeses you can hork...)
gloom: high def, res, nice
prudence in an eth bugged armor: highest possible def attainable from an armor (ridiculous rares excluded) and res
stone: high def, stats and res

[thewoodshed]

maybe I should do some countess runs...

[DBlock]

All of the armors mentioned are very much capable of getting you through hell. What I usually use when I'm low on wealth is usually Lionheart, Treachery and\or Smoke. All very obtainable runewords. If you get lucky with an Um, I'd go for Duress.

If you're not having any issues, I'd just keep the unupgraded Duriels and save up my runes. If you really want to switch armors it's a tossup between Leviathan and Black Hades imo. It basicly comes down to if you want higher def and dr (you lose cbf and res which can be costly) or if you want more dmg (assumes you have some ed jewels to socket). Personally I'd just go with Duriels unless I could get CBF and res elsewhere.


@Krupa
Don't know if I missed something, but how does Prudence with its 140-170%ed make the highest def armor? I suspect this comment was meant for Stone.

[Krupa]

@Krupa
Don't know if I missed something, but how does Prudence with its 140-170%ed make the highest def armor? I suspect this comment was meant for Stone.

prudence repairs itself, so you can make it in an ebugged base. assuming 1k base def, youŽll sport 2.4k - 2.7k def, and that is with an average ebugged base. 1.3k base def -> 3.1k - 3.5k