Grief + spirit is your ideal smite combo?
All elite shield bases deal the same average dmg (rondache 0.5 more but no big deal).
But from ST to vortex you need more and more dex to reach max block.
It wouldn’t be bad if you needed the dex for ar, but you don’t.
Against any non-player attacker in the game, you gain more effective hp against physical dmg from the saved pts into vita than the very slight increase chance to not get hit from the bonus def. And ofc it’s also better vs all dmg types that don’t require a hit check.
Spirit gives you
45 fire res
80 light/cold/psn res
You only need to stack res against meph, and he deals light/cold dmg
80 > 72 form hoz+um > 45 from exile/phoenix
35 fcr > 0
Mostly relevant for the mini Ubers
Sure you could tele on swap, but weapon swapping can sometimes be clunky, it’s just more practical.
55 fhr > 0
If there’s one place more susceptible to get you in hit recovery, it’s against the Ubers.
Getting back into attacking/leeching a few frames faster is a small plus (up to 4-5 frames faster, depends on what we compare against)
The FBR% from the other shield options brings nothing to the table. You would need 86% to reach the last blocking frame.
The extra +2 combat skills on Hoz is only +1, cuz you cast HS on cta side. This is very minimal dmg.
The +2 offensive skills on exile is less dmg than +2 all.
The ed% on phoenix beats the +skills on all other options. It’s the best offensive option, but gives you less of everything else.
Grief’s +400 dmg is ~3x more flat smite dmg.
A build with just 60% CB from gtoes and guillaumes instead of 100% ends up killing faster, and you leech from flat dmg, not CB, so you get ~3x more sustain.
The faster ias from grief is also allowing you to maintain your attack speed more easily against holy freeze, and gives more flexibility on other gear pieces rather than requiring some other sources of ias to achieve the same thing.
Using LW + exile all you get is very high chances to cast life tap. Once it has triggered once, it’s useless to have such a high % chance.
And you need OW to stop the healing. So if you use that setup you still kinda need to use dracs (for a 3rd useless source of life tap lol) or to swap gtoes for gores.
LW/exile feels like a more ‘’secure’’ option on paper, but like I said, you end up with up to 3x less leech and no other real advantages.
Conclusion:
Grief is the only real option (talking about high end gear here). Good news, it’s much more cheap than LW!
Spirit ST is the best overall do-it-all single setup, but if you don’t mind swapping weapons and paying higher price for an extra phoenix and more res from inventory, then phoenix can be ‘’worth’’ the small dmg increase.
Stay away from LW and exile… they’re expensive noob bait.
This post was edited by SinsOfTheSun on Oct 21 2025 07:17am
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