Sorceress blocking%

[Crystalion]

Frozen/Shiver Armor.  Everyone has their own preferences for these.  They work better (slightly) with a cold sorc build that plans to have high CM (so that the chill/freeze duration is not reduced as much), but CM is not worth investing in for these skills alone.

Good points, whyBish (most I didn't quote here).

I'm all for personal preferences. ;) But I feel compelled to point out a few of the (obscure?) differences between the armors...

Chilling Armor, which almost no one uses, afaik, is insanely good vs. inferno, last I checked.

Chilling Armor (by ranged) and Shiver Armor (by melee) both, regardless of the distance of the attacker, trigger when you are attacked, *not* because you are hit.

Frozen Armor triggers because you are *hit*. Note that if you *block* you are *not* considered to be hit.

I imagine this also means that you won't trigger any other effects "on being struck" (like Delirium), which could be good or bad, depending.

So, while I often use Frozen Armor, it bites that it does not freeze/slow down an attacker that has demonstated an ability to hit you, but who happens to have been blocked... and you are now in blocking mode!

Shiver Armor, OTOH, will chill and slow all attackers even just *trying* to hit you as well, whether they missed because of your DR or because you blocked.

Since blocking will fail (it is capped at 75% after all) you are going to take hits from time to time. I prefer to survive those hits. If my HPs are high enough and my hit recovery and block recovery times fast enough, and I chill the monsters for even attempting to swipe at me, I'm fairly likely to be be able to get off a (fast cast!) teleport to escape danger.

So my preference is usually Shiver Armor. Works for me. YMMV, depending on how you play and what you enjoy.

My present build, a clvl 86 softcore ranged Enchantress, stays away from melee of course. Shiver Armor is just an emergency "get out of jail (almost) free card" for when I somehow get a small number of monsters in my face ("sorry fellas, I didn't really *mean* to teleport into the midst of you... cya!").

...

As crazy as it may sound, I'm quite happy to be using a Luna (with pDiamond) when I'm in teleport/shield mode. Here are the reasons...

1. inven/stash space is tight which limits my choices in equipment when I have *must have* goals
2. since I'm not usually in shield mode, it doesn't have to be "perfect"
3. when I block, I want to recover very quickly (Luna is, at +50%, so, afaik, only 5 frames to block)
4. I wanted a mode where I could ignore enemy Blizzards (several ways of doing this, and Luna is one).
5. when I'm in shield mode I'm often teleporting through danger, so +HPs are useful.

Because I'm a ranged Enchantress and Luna adds dex I actually have 36% block with Luna with without having pumped dex especially for it, which is just short of its soso 40% blocking potential. This doesn't strike me as particularly good, but it does help!

My merc (act 3) is using another "crappy" shield, the Lidless (again, with pDiamond). I swap with him when I feel like it, which is typically only for buffing (but sometimes, when I wear a Ravenfrost, I let him have the Luna, so we can both ignore Blizzards).

My primary defense against physical is to "not be there". So that 36% block *must* be at high speed or I'm dead, because the only stuff that hits me is stuff that "shouldn't happen". Frankly, if I had a slow blocking shield, I'd be hosed, because my Dex is too high! :D

The only real defensive weakness of my build/behavior is vs. *physical* fast arrow ranged attackers (slow arrows do not upset me). Elemental ranged attackers my build can ignore (I'm not counting "magic" damage as elemental here). So really, the only thing I'm "missing" from my shield is charges of "Slow Missile" ;)

I didn't mention this to "convert" anyone, but just to point out just how varied approaches (that still work) can be.

edit: p.s. I didn't mean to be obscure: the Sanctuary runeword, KoKoMal, is for shields and would meet my "slow missile" criteria (only way for a non-Zon to cast SM at will, afaik). The use of a Mal is a bit spendy for the other attributes gained, so you really have to want that Slow Missiles pretty badly.