Doing it wrong or not. I see no room in my playstyle for a shield.
It isn't a cheaper setup... it is your thing... that is fine.
I still think that for the same gold you could build a far superior dw setup.
If mitigation is so important, why aren't you running mantra of healing with resists rune?
Your mantra of conviction saves your ass doesn't it?

Play however you want guys. Personally, I´ve been playing DW since day 1, beat Inferno pre-1.0.3 100% solo with DW build, and I still havent touched a shield on my monk. I like being tanky, instead of a "plexi glass cannon" monk, so I oll with a mix of attack speed and crit instead of going pure crit. I might be no glass cannon, but I´m a fucking M1 heavy tank that tramples shit.

Shields are nice for the Crit Chance bonus, higher resists and obviously dmg mitigation. I tried out DW, it's okay i definitely lose health faster and save maybe a bit of time when killing.

o-o I have 48% dodge with 37% block on a sacred shield (29% 8% crit total 75 res shield w/ 90dex)
IMO that 37% makes me take little to no damage with res and armor.

And note you can't dodge molten or arcane or plague

I prefer shield

hMM really strange to feel like you were doing worse with a shield in Act3 than DW.
I gotta say i truely think it is just preferrential bias. "Testing" only goes so far.
I can "test" using a 2hand weapon on my monk all day, you will never convince me that it is good however, i hate it, its slow, its clunky... i feel like that kind of bias is what you have about shields.

Last night i was in act3 farming some random champ packs. I come across some of those tongue lasher guys with some really ridiculous modifiers (i forget exactly, maybe arcane, vortex, extra fast, extra HP?).
I couldnt stay near them cause there were 4 of em dropping arcanes NONstop. I was dual wielding, their ranged tongue attack hit me HARD, and hit me often since i often had to run away due to arcane.
3-5 hits and i was dead... So i try a couple more times, same story. I figure screw it, it couldn't hurt to try shield... i pop on shield... i kill them first try. I took less dmg, blocked a few hits, and was still able to deliver relative same amounts of DPS.
Cases like this when i have the same gear on and change only one piece, my armor went up 1.4k, block went up to 25% with 3k-4k+ absorb, and then the goodies like extra stats my weap didnt have... vita, resistances, etc.

Again, people seem to 100% ignore the REASON shields are so helpful, especially for budget players. the RAW armor gain (% mitigation vs everything, not just blocked attacks) which was a HUGE help versus the ranged attacks.
Resistances, which i have about 100 extra on shield, so i took less physical dmg from their tongue lashes and less arcane from their modifier. Additionally, my 2nd point was that you DO NOT lose as much DPS/APS or heal proccs as people keep claiming.
You lose 2-4k dps, .10 to .20 APS, and a source of LoH... while you can still easily maintain over 1k LoH sword/board (these #s are purely from my own gear switching, not a universal #).

When i dual wield, i was 100ish less Vitality, 100 less resistances, 1.4k less armor, and 25% less block down to 0%. Those stats are quite a big defensive bonus, especially vs a fight where it is impossible for me to stay on target 100% of the time.
Yes killing fast is a great solution towards ending fights faster, less risk of dying... provided i can be in melee range as long as possible... any time i am disconnected, i cant hit the target for more spirit to heal with LPSS or heal with LoH, and less mitigation means i take more dmg.
My sources for healing will run out faster than with a shield (in comparable gear) and unless i am lucky enough to have SOMETHING to hit, i risk dying a little bit faster due to this lack of mitigation. Many many fights do not allow players to be in melee range 100% of the time, act bosses and champs alike.

Again, i actually play Dual Wield MOST of the time. But my monk grew up in act1 inferno with a shield because i was poor and couldnt afford a 2nd weapon as nice as my mainhand.
Now in Act2/3, i DW as much as i can cause it is the most FUN to me, but i cannot deny the benefits of having a shield, switching to a shield in situational fights... which with inferno champ affixes, can sometimes be pretty often.
Let's face it, act bosses are a joke, i can DW them all day and giggle about it... CHAMP and ELITE mobs with crazy modifier combinations is the real challenge and there is rarely an act3 champ mob that i can melee for 100% of the fight.



bold part for reference... as i said, DW bias you simply do not enjoy the playstyle... kind of ends the discussion i would think?
It is truely cheaper. 700-800 weapon with good LoH (like 600+ range), 1hand 1.30 APS or faster is easily 3-8 mil these days, good luck finding like it for 1-3 mil. they dont exist anymore.
a shield with 1.2K+ armor, 20%+ block, dex/vita, resists at good levels like dual resist stack can EASSSSILy be found for 2mil or less... much less.

my shield is 25% block, 1.4k armor, ~70dex, ~80vita, ~30 arcane res, ~40 all res (Sacred Shield, so highest absorb) and i bought it for 900k (cheapest at those stat levels i could find).
in comparison to my weapon 860 DPS fist, 1.40 aps, 850 LoH, and other arbitrary stats for ~7 mil-ish. a 2nd one assuming around the same prices is over 7x more expensive than the shield route... i was lucky to find my own comparable fist.
Mitigation isnt pure res stacking or pure armor, it is a combination of all sources, resistances, armor, dodge, block. Mantra of Conviction works so great due to the combination of these other factors, my armor, my resistances, etc.
You see posters complain about dying nonstop everyday here and their stats consist of only ONE aspect stacked to ridiculous amounts, 1k+ resists, but only 3-4k armor, no block, only 20-30% dodge? bad. vice versa for only high armor, or only high dodge... bad.
anyway u get my point just more food for thought

This post was edited by Batou079 on Jul 12 2012 10:52am

I am seeing the reasons that one would use a shield more and more. I may start keeping one in my inventory for a swap if I need the mitigation on the pack you were referring to.
I am not at all a fan of swapping gear. I would rather keep the same setup.
I actually am testing a 2h setup right now because I found a huge 2 hander and since it is
a 2 hander it isn't worth selling.
I agree... it is ssllloooowwww and a cyclone build sicks with it but I am going to mess with it since I got the weapon for free.

I like the big crit numbers from it but the speed is like haveing an afk friend in town buffing the enemies. It takea sooo long to kill stuff..

But I will give it one thing...

I broke up the monotony!

^ there you go, break things up, change things around so you can broaden your experiences more, i love changing things up.

Yay, shield swapping is a pain, but i always keep one handy despite loving Dual Wield action so much.
It really has saved my life on many occasions, even last might switches in the middle of a fight when im noticing i take a lot of dmg per hit.

2hander eh? Well i found a 1.2k diabo last week and sold id already, i tried it for a couple days and hated it.
i feel like you get way more stats, LoH return, overall total crit dmg due to attack speed from dual wield.
2hand MAYBE can be pretty impressive for monk if you stack a lot of Attack Speed gear + use Fist of Thunder? Other than that i wasnt impressed. GL with it though, it is... interesting playstyle.

Shields are not useless. It depends on the player. Ultimately, if someone wants to use a shield, they will realize certain stats they need to build up to help with the block % and mitigation, making it a valid build. If the shield is crap though, yes, I can understand why someone would say shields are garbage.

The same conditions apply for dual wield. You're losing defense for damage, but you're gaining dodge and attack speed. In some cases, you lose damage, but most of the people on here are aware of such things and have planned accordingly.

If you want calculations, increasing dodge increases your EHP more than increasing your block % + amount blocked. Is it subject to RNG? I'm not sure yet. I've ran countless tests, spent about 20-30 mil of gold on equipment for experimentation and the one thing I've concluded is that I actually legitimately got around 70% effective dodge when i had around 72.5%. Meaning I did actually dodge 7 out of 10 attacks. I tested this by putting low damage, high dexterity weapons on, mantra of evasion (no backlash), no crit, dashing strike + blinding speed, and guardian's path. The weapons sucked, so I didn't do a lot of damage. However, they had a *lot* of spirit gen, allowing me to sit there and take hits for a little while. This was done in A1, and I spent about 4 hours doing it for a buddy of mine that I work with. We had a bet that RNG would make dodge useless. He lost.

At fully buffed dodge %, if a mob hit me for 10 times, I literally dodged 7 of the hits. This was consistent all the way up to halls, where I had 2 single targets that connected for 1 extra.

I spent about 3 mil on that equipment just to validate it. I gained 5 mil back for winning the wager. Win-Win.

Nice! I wonder how the actual blonk mechanic works. If 70 percent is rng or if you are just given the 7 blocks per 10. Attacks.
I wish that we had single player mode for this so we could datamine all of the actual game mechanics.

^ block? He was saying dodge was at 70%... i think max block from Justice Lantern + Helm is 40 something?
hehe i think you just misread dodge as "block"

anyway, yay TECHNICALLY 70% dodge is a 7/10 chance PER attack to dodge.
So effectively the average should work out to roughly that same # in real world.

However, the RNG factor is... there is still 3/10 chance PER attack that you will not dodge.
if RNG is cruel, that 30% chance could roll many times in a row!!
Basically, %chance is one thing, the actual behind the scenes mechanics for how the actual RNG formula works in the game is another thing.

if 7/10 dodge rate can be at all reliable, that could potentially be overpowered for PvP.
but not sure it works on a flat % basis like that. Very interesting info Veranor.

This post was edited by Batou079 on Jul 12 2012 12:48pm