02-12-2009, 10:40 AM
Quote:I believe this is true as well. Lvl 20 is supposedly the best overall for such shields though ive never really tried shopping one which i explain below. Its also a great lvl to shop Obsidian Mammoth items and swiftness bows, in particular the much coveted Massive Swiftness.
Interestingly, I never cared for high AC shields. Ive always preferred Emerald Tiger over Holy/Awesome Tiger. Using a resist shield on warr frees up a jewel slot for mana, and with a nice plate you get plenty of AC anyway, usually enough to avoid being hit often long as you have enough dex for your block. Using a Holy Tiger I would think would give only minimal protection more in hell/hell, and at the cost of mana and/or having a less flexible setup on your char....so ive never really sought one one of these shields.
A couple of things. At level 20 or 21 (from level 16 on, in fact) you can also buy an emmy tiger. I bought a 48/9/48. I was level 19 when I found it, and I was also hoping for a holy tiger. I actually saw 1 on a base 10 shield. I didn't yet know that it wasn't possible to find the holy tower tiger at that level. Grrrr Bolty (I hope I'm not banned from this site now).
The best level to shop, is 21, not 20, as far as I understand. Let me elaborate. Here are the items you might want to shop for in that general level - let me know if I missed any.
Crimson/garnet shield of brilliance.
Massive Swiftness.
Obs mammoth.
Emmy tiger.
Holy tiger.
The hardest one is massive (qlevel 20) swiftness (qlevel 10). The reason being that you need to be able to get both qlevels at the same time. According to Jarulf Griz will sell you 2 items at clevel -1, to at clevel, 1 at clevel +1, and 1 at clevel + 2. You can buy a massive swiftness at qlevel 20 or 21, so at clevel 21 you have 4 slots to buy it in, which is better than any other clevel (if you are willing to settle for a brutal swiftness then you would do better at 19 where you could buy it in any of the 6 slots, and 2 of the slots could offer the massive swiftness as well).
Since brilliance is qlevel 11 you can buy it in any of the 6 slots at clevel 21, and garnet is qlevel 20 so at 21 you can buy it in all 6 slots, whereas at 20 only in 4 of them. At 22 you would only be able to buy brilliance in 5 of the 6 slots.
The other 3 items are from Wirt. When going from 20 to 21 you allow any qlevel 42 item to be sold, but since there aren't any you don't add any new possible items to Wirt's arsenal. On the other hand, you do rule out, in terms of items that can be prefixes or suffixes on shields, armor or helms: cobalt, crystal, garnet, deflection, and harmony. Admittedly, you might want an obsidian harmony, but you would do better shopping Griz for that anyway. In fact, your chance of finding an emmy tiger is pretty good (relatively :)), since there are now only 8 possible prefixes for shields and 2 suffixes that he can sell you - and, for the most part, you don't care about the base shield (or at least not so much, and anyway emmy tower tiger is beyond the price limit and he won't sell gothic till qlevel 23 when tiger is out).