Spectral Shield Throw

I’m using this as my main skill this league on a Juggernaut, hit level 86 last night. I like it quite a bit, it is pretty unique when it comes to gearing. It does feel a bit weak currently, but I know some of that is due to my focusing on bleeds and wearing a Kaoms, which leaves me with only a 4 link at the moment. I could see the damage being much higher on a duelist or ranger.

I have a deadeye (level 79 atm) and the skill does feel good (not great but good). it is a lot of fun positioning bosses so they would get hit by the initial projectile and by the secondary projectiles after forking and shattering into a wall but having to do this can get a little too much at times.
Also, I feel like I was forced into going phys to cold conversion to benefit from the frost bomb reduced resistances since I was feeling like I was lacking damage. I will try to go 100% phys again once I’m over 80.
The only thing I do not understand about it is why Chance to Bleed support was not changed to work with it. From what I understand it is worded like that to exclude FB but now we have a third way of attacking (rather than just with weapons or unarmed we have with shield)
Overall it feels like a decent, mid-tier skill. What would take it to a top clearing skill would be giving it a chance to shatter on pierce/chain/fork (potentially based on accuracy like 5% per 200 accuracy) in addition to the guaranteed shatter at the end of the projectile. This will not impact single target dps too much and will make the clearing much smoother. Will also make sure you don’t just get it, but have to invest for it so there will be an extra incentive for going pure accuracy even if you are not going crit rather than just picking champion or going RT.

Hope this was helpful.

I started the league with a deadeye spectral shield throw 90% cold conversion, it felt good while leveling with all the uniques shields available. I'm now 93 farming tier 15 easily,SST is atleast decent with enough investment like any other skill.

I use pierce from deadeye ascendancy to help clear, I don't really like fork/chain. Herald of ice/herald of ash also helps.

I scale with critical, extra cold damage and cold penetration. I took all the frenzy/power charges I could and use the new unique Farrul's fur for generate charges.

The skill is fine in term of damage but a bit clunky when clearing without a lot of projectile speed and pierce.

Hope it helped.

I tried it with a Gladiator as the changes to that ascendancy seemed to make it seem like a decent fit but it didn't have much single target killing power once I reached red maps. Clearing ability was decent once I added Gloomfang. That single chain put the shield inside the group before it exploded and that helped more of the secondary projectiles hit something instead of bouncing away from the pack and being wasted. I was never able to find a shield with high enough damage over Lioneye's Remorse to make it feel effective against map bosses, though. It felt like it might work better as a tank support class. Ok help during map clears but do nothing but taunt boss while everyone else kills. Not what I was looking for so I gave up on that build and re-rolled as a slayer to play around with some more effective solo melee builds.

Lvl 90 deadeye, crit build with phy to cold conversion. My damage is ok during Vaal haste clearing maps up to t15, I lack the top end game gear to max this builds potential but it has been some what fun. As others have said fork seems a bit lame to use so I wen't with a full damage setup in 6 link, pierce from deadeye and chain from gloomfang. I have maybe experienced a bug on some mobs, my play style is to shield charge in close and point blank the mobs. If I get to close however my damage seems to miss. Have noticed this in path of building if you set distance of spell travelled the DPS reads lower than it moving 1 unit.

It should be pointed out that this skill can do amazing damage but to get that damage it is locked behind some insanely expensive and somewhat unobtainable on bestiary league, I know this is the same for all builds but to compare a pog champion can do over 4 million DPS Vs shaper with decent investment 10 ex??, Yet a crit deadeye or Scion/ can pull only 1 to 1.5 million with obtainable gear. With insane investment it can do 4.4 million DPS Vs shaper.

Suggestions, review damage scaling from the shields armour, the best DPS shields for this build will be unobtainable to most. If you can make it so more shields could be used and not pigeon hole the choices to a fat armour rare with zero life then we have a fun to gear build.

Level 95 Deadeye ssf playing with spec shield throw.
Used it during leveling progress all the way to current.
6l setup sst-ele damage-ele focus-faster attacks-phys proj- cold to fire.
Notable items include gloomfang neck, hrimsorrow gloves, atziri promise, 60% extra ele damage shaped axe, 2.2k defence rare shield.
Currently have a 90% phys to cold conversion then cold to fire support.
Using pointblank + ele overload, can clear trash fairly reasonable up to reds, map bosses generally a slow time.
Taste of hate / curse on hit gloves would be nice to increase damage.

In contrast to the amount of time and resources put into the build, it doesn't seem to do anything particularly well, probably due to it's lack of scaling from a lot of sources.
It shines best clearing trash, and depending on the map boss you can get some alright single target. Wouldn't take it near an actual boss.

Another issue is that the skill scales differently to any other skill, which in itself is a good thing design wise, however results in there being no readily available skill swap for single target.

On the note of penetration, you're pretty much pigeon holed in elemental penetration supports, or hard to obtain items like shroud of the lightless or a shaped item with ele penetration. Not having access to weapon elemental penetration nodes makes for a poor time.

Unique shields are unusable due to their relatively low armor compared to higher end yellow shields.
Evasion shields are also practically unusable simply because they can't roll as high as armor shields, and evasion does the same thing as armor in scaling the skill.
I'm unsure of a situation where es shields could be used either.

On crit, it's particularly difficult to scale, as a you have to rely purely on global critical strike chance and multi.
This means on the passive tree you don't have access to any other sources of crit such as weapons, traps or spell.
The only other way to scale it is using es or hybrid es shields, which means you're practically halving your base damage or more.

On the topic of chain, pierce, fork, return.
Chain is practically mandatory as otherwise you lose half the projectiles when it explodes on the first target. Having at least one chain allows it to bounce somewhat into the pact, then explode outwards.
Pierce is nice to help clear larger pacts but not mandatory, it's also hard to fit pierce in - on items or from support, this is the same as fork.
Only source of return that can be used that I'm aware of is tora crafted onto wands, which in turn locks you out of shield charge and anscetral totem.

Overall it's probably mid to low tier skill, that doesn't particularly do anything well.

Potential changes could include-
Increase base damage, lower damage scaling.
Increase base crit.
Change evasion to increase attack speed.

Other thoughts
Adding a threshold jewel, perhaps allows you to throw two shields.
Potentially add another tag to skill gem ~ probably not melee, unsure if anything would fit.
Make the exploding shards function like spectral throw, so that they return after they reach maximum distance


It is a fun skill however, and I did enjoy using it, but my gosh certainly not every powerful.

Terrible skill, leveling with it feels worse than lvling with a bow.
The shield to damage scaling needs to be upped by at least 50%.

The fact that you can't use LMP and you have to rely on the terrible fork mechanic means you're gonna have a very slow clearspeed. Forking usually hits the lead mob and then the projectiles fly away from the mobs behind it which makes you lose even more dps.
This is a bad skill. Either give it LMP or more projectiles on explosion or double it's single target.

If you have skills like KB that clears 4 screens with a single right click there's no place for skills like SST in it's current state.

LVL89 Deadeye Using 90% cold convert SST with a Magna Eclipsis and a Shaper stat stick. Its a custom build id been working on in PoB

Links : SST - Faster Attacks - Phys Proj Attack - Ele Dmg w/Attacks - Inc Crit Strikes - Maim

Buffs: Hatred - Herald of Ice(curse on hit setup for power charges) - Blood Rage - Ancestral Protector

Gloomfang is used for chain but before that i used Ewar's Mirage from its required level until about 75.

I find it really cool that its a skill that scales off of the shield and not the weapon. I feel like it falls behind in aspects like Attack speed and aim however. I was thinking
maybe having attack speed scale with block chance or something would provide a more fluid feel in the later game, considering the skill has been the same speed for me since lvl60 with no definite way to increase its speed besides passive points and jewels. In terms of Aiming, more often than not since the projectile is so slow i have to be either right on top of the bosses , which is hella dangerous, or throwing one and moving, which is terrible for dps. Bow builds have less trouble with aiming since they fan the area. Theres no lock on for SST and no way to keep the target stationary. Even after I do find the target, unless theyre are nearby adds, my damage is literally halved. Which brings up the next topic

Half of the skill is the explosion. Against bosses you only get the initial hit and no projectiles can come back to hit him. we're losing half of the usage of the skill on nothing.
simple solutions would be double damage on the initial hit i guess. or my personal favorite.

Chain totem

Id love a chain totem for something like this. A totem to use your skill off of would benefit so many build but would work wonders with this one. Being able to target the totem would provide us with reliable ways to hit single targets as well as a reliable way to put the PROPER damage on the single target.
Too dangerous to be hitting the target from a close range? Chain totem in between you and target the totem. Since chain is homing youll reliably hit the target as long as you hit your totem. Can survive but the damage is lacking? place the totem directly behind the target to reliably get the projectile damage bouncing back into your target.

Its a great league starter contrary to some peoples opinions. until i regeared i didnt spend more than 50chaos or so. The skill is solid. just needs tweaking

Not much to say here that hasn't already been said.

I'm also a 90% Cold conversion only I'm using a thick Jugg. I'm using a shaper stat stick for additional cold damage and I'm using a Lion's Roar because why not?

Links: SST - Phys Proj Attack - Cold Penetration - Ele Dmg w/Attacks - Maim - added Fire Damage

Buffs: Hatred, Herald of Ash, frost bomb, Blood Rage, Protector, and sometimes Vaal Haste


I wanted to do a SST build for a long time but from the moment I started looking at the numbers in Path of Building I just couldn't believe how weak it seemed to be. Even with hypothetical heavy currency investment I couldn't get the damage anywhere near something I'd say is satisfactory but the numbers don't tell the whole story.

I've found that using Gloomfang and Fork provided me with pretty good clear speed. I've gone through breaches about as well as my frost blades builds have. However as you do more difficult content the lack of damage becomes increasingly more noticeable. Eventually you have to be fully buffed and spamming flasks in order to feel good clearing trash mobs and the single target damage just isn't there. Fortunately not doing good single target damage is pretty much non consequential to a Jugg so I can survive high tier boss fights but I haven't attempted any of the big bosses yet, no ubers or guardians...etc. However based on the damage I'm seeing vs red map bosses I don't think it's worth attempting.


Plenty of people have praised the skills unique qualities but accurately pointed out it's short comings but I guess I'll just list them from my own experiences


- Scaling Damage is difficult, basically you can't scale it with...anything so you're shoehorned into a particular path or 2 regardless of what class you use for it.

- most shields that don't have at least 1500 evasion/armor are completely useless

- Aiming is bad, it reminds me of the old melee aiming days only it's 5 times worse. I feel as though the size of the shield being thrown should be bigger or at least depend on your actual shield and not just be a random frisbee

- no other skills like this exist so you can't use a skill specifically for single target and must find a way to cope with pretty bad 1v1 damage at high levels.

- building a crit variant is extremely difficult because you can only use global crit.

- more risky than basically any other ranged-skill, non-tanky versions of this build are in for 10 minute boss fights or a lot of deaths (I wouldn't say this skill is HC Viable unless you're using a tank build)

- getting attacks speed is a headache -_-

- #1 problem with this build is the cost of making it effective or at least decent.


I repeat! The #1 problem with this build is the investment it takes to make it good. Most skills in the game can be made end game viable with the exception of some that will be forever a utility skill. However, Truthfully trying to make this skill good sort of feels like I'm trying something outlandish. It's like how I imagine making a Leap Slam Build would feel. I could probably make a decent leap slam build that only uses leap slam if I spent 50-100 Exalts on the character and the character would still probably struggle vs end game bosses.

My gear on my level 88 isn't that expensive it's a few Exalts maybe? However, most of my characters are using gear that's maybe 5 exalts or less and there damage is double, triple, quadruple, quintuple, or even Sextuple the damage that my shield throw does. I'm not exaggerating either. According to PoB with an additional 40 exalt investment (not counting a headhunter which is 50-90+ EX depending on the league you play in) I can bring my damage up to double which would make it a great clear character and okay vs bosses in high tier maps but it would still probably fail vs end game bosses.


Solutions: I like many of the suggested solutions made here already. If you're not going to change the scaling of the skill then the existing shield nodes need to be buffed or perhaps new shield nodes particularly dealing with damage, attacks speed, crit, or all of the above need to be added somewhere on the skill tree.

Perhaps even a support gem or 2 that deal with shield damage?

Increasing the size of the shield might help with hitting things

Threshold jewels that cause projectiles to return to the point of impact(as already suggested by a few) or something that gives the initial hit a chance to do triple damage(I'm not kidding)


I know this is going to sound repetitive but I can't say it enough, Changing the scaling of this skill so that you don't need borderline impossible gear to be good should be the aim. Only 1-5% of the community could even afford to build a shield throw character that feels good compared to other possibilities.

The most fair comparison IMO is spectral throw. There have been several builds over the past few years who have managed to ramp up the damage on spectral throw into the multi-millions.(Yes even after the double dipping removal and poison/bleed nerfs). Meanwhile most people testing this skill struggle to reach 250k peak damage.


With that said it's clear that this skill wasn't intended to be a boss killing skill but more of a clear skill and I have no problem clearing with it but you must understand that without a huge single target skill to pair with eventually it just feels to bad to play for me personally.

I'm curious to hear more potential solutions from other people though. Wow...this is a way longer post than I originally intended to make...