Is the block % and block absorption of a shield included in the calculated Protection value for that shield? If not, is there an easy way to determine which shield will provide better average damage mitigation between one with higher armor and one with better blocking?
Diablo – How to determine the effective Protection from a shield
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Updated Answer
Having soloed inferno recently with a dual wielding setup on my monk, I can now say as a fact that dual wielding is absolutely possible. But note, this highly depends on having two great weapons to use on your monk.
Here are the main advantages for dual wielding over a shield:
- Additional socket on weapon for HUGE critical hit damage boost (This is the most important factor, I've severly underestimated how much DPS having more crit hit damage can provide with modest crit hit chance (~30%).)
- A ton of more stats
- More Life On Hit Proc (This is the second most important factor)
- 15% faster attack
- 15% more dodge
My primary weapon right now is a ~850 dps 250dex 250vit 500 life on hit axe.
My secondary is a ~750 dps 850 life on hit 97% critical hit chance axe.
The main goal of this setup is to have high dps with huge life on hit and high critical hit damage. I'd prefer my primary to be socketed to have even more critical hit, but those weapons with similar stats to mine are too expensive right now and far beyond my reach.
Now that I have 3x more DPS than the old tank build, even though I'm down quite a bit on defense, its easier since I kill them faster so I don't have to tank as long. Also, the really deadly effects such as arcane turret and ground effects can't be blocked anyway, making blocking less useful than killing the target faster.
Finally, dual wielding axes is major style points, imo looks much nicer than axe/shield ;)
Old Answer
This answer is still applicable since having 2 great weapons is really really expensive compared to 1 and a shield.
From my experience, a shield is extremely necessary in late game inferno and ponies (the 1.03 damage nerf has made shield even better by reducing the spikiness of damage). Lets compare and contrast:
Shield Benefits
- 1000 - 1500 armor (double that if you use deadly reach)
- 70-140 resist all (70+ res all and another element of choice for stacking)
- 30-40% block (high block shield with JL + HoC) for 3k damage (note this is after reduction!)
- 1 free passive slot (you don't have to take guardian's path so you can devote 1 more passive for defense, such as resolve)
Overall, you gain HUGE damage reduction benefits for 1 equipment slot. If you are trying to be a tank this is almost a no brainer.
Duel Wield Weapon Benefits
- 15% Faster attack speed for more LoH
- More stats (weapons can get higher stats than armor can), and more unique effects like transcendence (having 100+ life per spirit spent is a great way to heal).
- Faster spirit regen (even faster if you have 2 spirit regen weapons)
- 15% dodge (if you take the passive)
Overall, you gain a little dodge (doesn't work when frozen, etc, and you can't dodge ground effects like desecrate and plague, which are the main sources of death in late game inferno), some more potential sources of healing and spirit regen, more damage, but way less survivability. Either way you won't be a tank.
To summarize, using a shield is a lot more defensive oriented, and thus provides the most survivability in late inferno acts (3+ and ponies). Not to mention finding a good shield is a heck lot cheaper than finding a good 1 hander with high damage, ias, stats, and LoH. You might be able to get away with duel wielding up to act 2, but I wouldn't expect you to last long beyond that unless you have godly gear and weapons.
It's complicated for a number of reasons, but here's some things I learned from fiddling in Excel.
For starters, Dodge will mitigate 100% of any hits you dodge, but you'll only Dodge D% of the time.
Armor will mitigate A% of every hit, but that value is dependent on the level of the enemies attacking you (see this question).
So the basic question is "what has to be true for D to be greater than A?"
At level 60, my calculations show that 520 Armor will give you just over 15% damage reduction from armor. So you only need 520 Dexterity for Sieze the Initiative to start being better.
However, this is only true if you have 0 base Armor and 0 base Dodge, which is probably not true! If you have 100 Armor you only need 420 Dexterity - unless you have 5% base Dodge, in which case you'll need 700 Dexterity on top of your 100 Armor...
You can use this table to estimate how much mitigation you'll get from armor when fighting level 60 monsters:
Armor Mitigation
500 14%
600 17%
700 19%
800 21%
900 23%
1000 25%
1100 27%
1200 29%
1300 30%
1400 32%
1500 33%
1600 35%
1700 36%
1800 38%
1900 39%
2000 40%
If you look up your base Armor + Dexterity here and compare to your base Dodge + 15% you should be able to tell which is better in a given situation.
Overall it SEEMS like it's pretty easy to stack Dexterity and have Sieze The Initiative outperform The Guardian's Path, but I tend to stack Dex anyway and definitely have not attempted to stack Dodge, so I'm not sure which is more viable in the long run.
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Best Answer
I do not believe that the 'Protection' value on a shield when comparing to another item does not take into consideration 'Block Chance' or 'Block Value'. I say this because a shield in comparison to a magic source on my Wizard rarely leaves more than ~0.2 difference in protection, yet my shield (Lidless Wall) has a 20% block chance for 2-3k or so.
With this in mind, when comparing shields to shields, take the 'Protection' value at face value but then do your own comparison for 'Block Chance' and 'Block Value'.