Spectral Shield Throw

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Arterton wrote:

As SSF player I'm disappointed about absence of new jewel for quest reward.
Wanna play it? Nah, fun not allowed.
Some skills play-ability is locked behind threshold jewels, and it limits build choice for a league.

Bandaid jewels are a real nuisance for skill variety.

IMO, Spectral Shield Throw should:
1. Get the current Divide and Conquer jewel bonus built into the gem

2. Have Divide and Conquer changed so that enemies hit by SST repel each other and are either intimidated, or have something like 1% reduced stun and freeze threshold per 15 armor/evasion on shield. That or just give me something that makes the single-target damage not total dirt tier.

3. Gain 1% projectile speed per level rather than getting a fat 40% dumped on you at 20% quality -making the skill not as insufferably slow to non-Deadeye characters and making Slower Projectiles support gem even remotely an option.

Another cool thing that could be done with a jewel rework of Divide and Conquer is if Spectral Shield Throw gems also become counted as Shield Charge gems.

Forgot to mention that leveling with this skill gem was hell for the first few acts until it got some flat damage from levels, and I could get shields with more than just a few hundred armor. (4 Link)

hmm i think this hit box is little to small ? ^^

The threshold jewel should become baseline behavior for SST.

Then introduce a new jewel that causes the shield to use the current default behavior, but split instead of shatter.

Adding shield return to the divide and conquer behavior would also be cool.

And in general, SST continues to have issues with damage scaling due to the nature of it. Players are shoehorned in to using a Magna Eclipsis as it is the only unique shield that provides a workable amount of armor/ev while at the same time it is difficult to craft a better rare. I feel energy shield could safely be added to the damage scaling at the exact same values armor/evasions are without being too overpowered due to how much lower ES values inherently are on shields.

Another alternative would be to make SST function as a blood & sand stance skill, allowing it to have a dedicated single target and dedicated mobbing function.

Some uniques that I feel would be a good target for a an armor/ev buff to make them SST viable are Unyielding Flame and Great Old One's Ward.

I've played SST characters to maps about 4 times since its introduction. The characters still on my account are:

SoloSelfCirclejerk응SST - Conflux Heist private league, currently leveling. Lv 41 ranger (planning deadeye)

Velox_SST - 86 Ascendant
SoloSelfCircleJerk_SST - 85 Deadeye

Been playing around with SST this league and one thing I noticed the most was the skill hit animation and particle tracking just doesn't feel good. Frost Blades auto-targets it's fragments, but SSTs don't seem to do this very well because of their short range. I'd rather see SST either track better and at longer ranges like Frost Blades, or get retooled into something like Arc where the actual projectile bounces between enemies rather than it splitting on a hit.

Shield centric builds are interesting to me and I'd like to see them get a bit more love/focus.

I've been playing a Trickster (no real reason) on and off with the skill for a week now and here's how I've set it up.

Main points of the build are the following:
Gear:
-Crown of Eyes
-The Admiral
-Oscillating Sceptre
-2.4k Armour Shield (best I could craft at the moment)
-Chrysalis Talisman

Flasks:
-Wise Oak
-Taste of Hate
-Atziri's Promise

Tree:
-Elemental Equilibrium
-Winter Spirit Cluster

Gems/Jewels:
-Anomalous Physical to Lightning Support
-Wave of Conviction
-Sniper's Mark
-Divide and Conquer
-Follow-Through+Eye to Eye Medium Cluster x2

Basically using a combination of Anomalous Physical to Lightning (60% phys to lightning at 20% quality) + Winter Spirit Cluster (40% phys to cold from 1 node + 1 notable) to completely turn damage to elemental. Proc-ing Elemental Equilibrium using the now Lightning+Cold damage to reduce Fire res in conjunction with Blasphemy+Flammability and Exposure from Wave of Conviction which is then utilized using the Admiral (Elemental Damage you Deal with Hits is Resisted by Lowest Elemental Resist Instead). *(Could use Phys to Lightning Support+Phys to Lightning on Gloves+Watcher's Eye Phys to lightning then have some added fire or cold to more easily scale elemental resist reduction as well but the watcher's eye is so expensive)

Using Crown of Eyes to scale damage via Elemental Overload and high spell damage on Oscillating Sceptre (100+% x1.5) and some spell damage from Chrysalis Talisman (~50% x1.5). Follow Through scales from 4 chains given from Divide and Conquer giving 60% each. Eye to Eye scales 60% each when target is nearby.

Strangely, split from Sniper's Mark works but split from Fury Valve doesn't.

Some more damage scaling with Wise Oak, Taste of Hate and Atziri's Promise.

Even after all that the it only has decent damage, been clearing t14 just fine but nothing worth mentioning but it's especially lackluster when we consider single target damage.

Suggestions:

1.)Interaction with stances
-one stance gives it the threshold jewel's effect, the other stance ups damage by something like 4x and x1.5 shield size at the cost of something like 60% less projectile speed AND 50% less attack speed. Basically using stances to add a mode where it becomes a precision nuke for single target which forces the player to either predict where the boss will be or go into melee range.

2.)Remake into a Steel Skill
-More thematic than a real suggestion since skill description literally says the shield shatters into shards. Not really sure about how this one will turn out but steel skills are really strong at the moment I'm sure someone will figure it out.

3.)Uses both hands but you can equip on main hand or off hand.
-an alternative to stances, off hand gives the threshold jewel effect, main hand gives the same as previously described in the 1st suggestion. You'd have to balance the skill itself further with this option since losing the stat stick weapon would not only severely impact damage, you'd also lose skill use like leap slam, weapon effects like oscellation sceptre's elemental overload, and interactions like overlord cluster notable.

4.)Interaction with Shield's Stats (Personal Favorite)
-Increase the skill's base damage, lower base attack speed and base crit chance, add #% MORE projectile speed.
-Decrease damage scaling from armour, then add attack speed scaling to evasion, then increase ES base crit chance scaling AND add crit multi scaling from ES.
-Chance to block scales shield size, projectile speed and number of chains from threshold jewel. Something like 1% block = 1% LESS projectile speed = 1% size (size, not area, just to make it easier to hit with mechanically, SHOULD NOT AFFECT #% HIT CHANCE from accuracy) then adjust block chance by shield base type in armour > armour+evasion > evasion > armour+es > es order.
-Block chance scaling will make it thematic too. Armour, the biggest, deal the most damage but is the slowest and chains the least due to its weight, evasion is the middle ground with the ideal size for throwing fast and and chaining cleanly. ES, the smallest, is the easiest to just chuck as hard as you can hoping for a crit and it chaining the most due to the speed it's thrown.

~if you use the last one I would love it if you could let me add something to the skill's or the threshold jewel's flavor text~

i know how to fix all the problems with this skill as far as its mechanic its pretty simple make it like splitting steel and shattering steel and add call of blades to it

sorry call of steel

My feedback on Spectral Shield Throw (SST):

Here is the essence of what I want to say in a few points, I will elaborate where I come from afterwards.

Pros
Clear is strong
More than that: It is fun! Chaining and the small projectiles feel very nice for clearing (Note: with the Threshold Jewel and Helm enchant).

Inherent Defensiveness
Having 10-15k Armour feels really nice for general mapping.

Cons
Things I consider meaningful downsides

Damage: Single Target
With a skill that scales offences via defences (and is ranged) I can understand that it might deal only half the damage of purely offensive skills, but we are nowhere near there.

Things I think can/should be adressed

Scalability
This is the main offender in my book. There are just not enough nodes and stats that can scale SST.

Attack Speed
Attack Speed is so hard to get that the dual-weilding node Ambidexterity was the chosen annoint over nodes like Heart of Frost, I think that is the best summary of this subject.

Targeting
The travel time on far away targets combined with the small(ish) hitbox feels bad sometimes.

MTX: Tempest/ Celestial please, what even is that Stygian Cross?

Suggestions
Goals: elegant, few side effects, keep intended weaknesses but add scaling options with investment

Direct changes (to the skill/jewel)

Balance of Defenses:  Add the same flat Damage to ES as to other Defenses, this would improve the viability of hybrid shields in crit builds, and could be implemented wihtout further complicating the gem description

Considerations:  This would elevate the possibility of Aeigs Aurora or magna Eclipsis being used as weapons. But would also keep them ~40% weaker damage wise than rare options instead of 55-66%. Aegis Aurora especially would have the option of very nice scaling, with block, armour and ES being extremely important and opening up crit options.


Consider buffing the base projectile speed to improve aiming for single targets.


Changing the threshold jewel to be non-mandatory and to be a trade-off. I think the most fitting tradeoff would be sacrificing defenses for offenses, allowing to trade armour, evasion and energy shield for damage. Making the penalty significant would make it desirable only if the defensive gap can be closed with other investments.

25% less global armour, evasion and es
Spectral shield throw gains 25% more benefits from shield stats

Considerations: This would improve the early/mid map progression with the skill, but is not an automatic pick for endgame content where those defenses would be especially desirable. In order for this to not be mandatory the skill must have various scaling options.


Allowing SST to scale with the main hand weapon's nodes would allow for diverse interesting builds, including sceptres, daggers or swords for crit, claws for leech, axes with their bleed focus or even maces with some stun scaling.

Considerations: This would be inelegant from the user perspective, requiring extra lines of explanation.


Indirect changes


Consider buffing the defense values of Evasion and hybrid shields. They are seldomly used and are considerably weaker than pure armour shields for SST.

Considerations: There may be some unique shields that get buffed by this, but no notable ones come to mind.


Changing the Weapon elemental penetration notables(especially in the ranger area) to affect SST would open more passive tree options. This includes: Command of the Elements (a shield tree!), Fangs of Frost, Arcing Blows, Lava Lash, Primeval Force and Force of Nature
Also changing the Sleight of Hand notable at the Shadow start would improve poison viability.

Considerations: Facebreaker conversion builds might benefit from this too (depending on the change), the dominant facebreaker builds appear to be pure-physical at the moment, so this might be a nice side effect. "Touc of God" builds would also benefit from this, but they too need all the help they can get.



Only armour shields (and maybe AR/EV hybrids) can be considered at the moment:

These are the stats for respective T1 Bases with T1 percent, T1 Flat and T1 percent and stun recovery rolls

Armour
2600.64

Evasion
2116.8

Energy Shield
388.08

AR/EV
1283/1283

AR/ES
1297/295

EV/ES
1366/307

There are 3 ways to (effectively) play SST at the moment, the League name in brackets indicates when I played it
Bleed (Delirium)
Impale
Cold Conversion (Blight, Heist)

This will be the main focus of this post, as I feel this should be the most high-investment, high-reward scaling, also the type i am most familiar with.

My Heist Build:
I stripped it for currency😞 thats why this is just a snapshot.
https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/Exort_Trivial/ExortTankyGirl?time-machine=week-2&i=4&search=time-machine%3Dweek-2%26skill%3DSpectral-Shield-Throw

With this gear I would have expected a lot more damage. Many of the pieces have considerable damage investment (right ring, belt, gloves) and the single target damage was very lacking while only having 5.5k Life at level 94.
After this snapshot I improved the sceptre more, but even the base alone was expensive as I had to create it myself.
The shield can also be a realistic 20% damage upgrade, but even then many builds would deal between 2 and 10 times the damage of this one (at this level of investment).

I used all applicable buffs (ancestral protector) and debuffs ( frost bomb, sniper's mark), my mana reservations where mostly offensive (hatred, herald of purity).

Ascendency Choices

I am very pleased with the variety of playstyles and ascendencies available. My problem is that only gladiator bleed versions seem to be good enough to consider.

Deadeye
old Chain mechanic replaced with: new: Mark, improved Far Shot (could feel bad) & Defensives: a bit weaker offensively, a bit stronger defensively

Gladiator (Bleed)
got nerfed a bit, should be fine still

Champion (Impale)
got hit a bit harsher

Raider
I think this is the go-to now, the attack speed is invaluable, have not tried it to be fair. The lack of more damage in the ascendency could prove difficult

Pathfinder:
Problem with non specific Element penetration, limited flask options: no dying sun, no lion's roar and sin's rebirth does not scale with flask effect

Assassin
Crit /w Hybrid Shields looks weak, Poison scales nicely with attack speed which is hard to get

Berserker
scales flat melee phys damage which does not work for SST

Attempted a pretty generic Raider ele ST as starter and I have so much regret.

Persevered with it until lvl 85 only then to realise that I could plop virtually any other skill gem in it's place and it would do at least twice the dmg.

Severely lacking in dmg and just feels awkward because of that. You have to wait for projectile return to get anywhere near the damage of other similar skills.

What's depressing about this is that I had invested into Proj dmg as well as elemental + full Claw cluster, And still swapping out ST for either Wild strike or Flicker strike doubled my dps and quadrupled my clear-speed.

Hell, even Lightnign strike clears better than this relative to gear investment and I consider that an awkward skill.

I like the ST mechanic itself, it's fun, but requires way too much gear to reach parity with many other skills.

The only advantage of ST that I can see is the sustain you get from having projectiles constantly on screen, keeping you up even when not attacking. That's really really the only good thing I have to say about it.