Right. I don’t think I’m being clear here. Apologies.
I don’t think it’s unfair for a shield based playstyle to be either mastery OR item dependent, just like how I don’t think it’s unfair for DW specs to be reliant on NB (or inqui if ranged).
And because I don’t think it’s unfair, I think it’s reasonable for shield-based sentinels to be pushed towards a specific item.
Yes. But abomination only has a 50% uptime
Right, hence my suggestion to push it towards BA.
I’m not saying don’t do BA. I’m saying it needs boosts in both themes.
Btw, DW has 2 very good medals, a relic and belt. So it’s not really hurting in your example. Shields…tho…that’s a different thing.
Absolution is beastly. You’ve got colossal grasp - which basically makes turns OG into roid rage. It’s also the only glove with phys res. You have citadel. Anvil + obelisk devotions.
Seems pretty equal to me.
Agreed. Maybe it’s just me, but if I were to look at eldritch gaze, I immediately think of chaos BA, not an item catered for a shield spec, because frankly - if the mods to posession were taken away, it wouldn’t really impact shield based build using the helm, let alone cripple it.
The converse isn’t true for chaos BA, however.
I think the damage is just a bonus here? Citdael for example doesn’t even provide damage. The whole concept of a shield spec is to become tanky at the expense of damage.
Absolution is restricted to 2 damage types and has an OK bonus in the relic slot. So not really. And just like Abomination for cd.
But back to topic…I think both can be boosted.
Then I think the helm is going to end up like targo or spellscourge. Items which want to do 2 things, and which fails at doing both these 2 things.
My suggestion is to either make it 2H chaos BA, or to go all out on the shield bonuses.
If boosting both is too much for Crate, then it may need to be split into two items. Like that belt a few patches ago.
It is indeed weak for either path. But Crate may understand that these paths diverge in 99% of the builds and might not fret over extra bonuses.
I don’t know what you mean when you say “if it’s too much for crate,” but IMO you’ll just make eldritch gaze too bloated if you were to cram so many modifiers into it, especially since its a non-set helm.
And why does it need to be split into 2 items? It’s alreadt one of the 2 MI’s dropped by the sentinel.
Well, if it were split into 2 concepts - that doesn’t mean that the Sentinel has to drop them both.
But ultimately I’ve mentioned that I liked the shield side as per the OP discussion. It’s not life or death for me so whatever direction Crate takes on this (if any) is fine by me.
Ok. Write up whatever shield mods you’d like to see and I’ll add it to OP
enough modifiers to outweigh that it can block completion bonus for many sets?
It was this^.
What’s the maximum amount of modifiers on a character? (Serious question) Is this a thing? Like some maximum number of bits reference or such?
Most items provide 1 or 2 mods to a skill. 2H are the exception.
Ok, I misunderstood Boromonokili. He meant that it needs to be good enough to forgo the set bonus.
I mean…conduits, ravager helm, might disagree with you here 
The technical answer should be 3 skills, and as many modifiers as you can fit on the screen.
power of said modifiers and statblocks matters as well.
I took this spec for a spin through some Nemeses and shard 50 of SR, it seems like the biggest gap is RR. Witchblade has no native chaos RR, so while it hits a respectable 113% when all the stars align, it’s still noticeably slower than Rah’Harbinger Deceiver and miles behind pierce or physical BA, which lose only a little RR in exchange for hitting resistances that are 10x lower.
Another 10% chaos RR to CoF would actually put it in competition with Harbinger, but I’d also like to swap the flat chaos damage to Blade Arc for extra %WD, which might at least speed it up a little.
Most of the other stats are fine: it has strong OA/DA shred, caps attack speed when hungering void is up, and has decent CC resistances outside of stun. It’s just the RR issue that is making the 200k DPS feel like molasses.
I personally don’t get Crate’s reluctance to simply add chaos RR into the CoF skill. If it needs to be stacked onto most every Occ item or set…then something is wrong with this restrictive philosophy. Idk if it is because it needs to be balanced against Inquisitors/Demo and Occult having too much combined RR at the same time…but it is pretty weird. Purifiers can stack a fair bit of chaos damage/RR, as well.
Because of chaos pets.
Though I still think it’s not hard to control. Put chaos RR in CoF, Nerf all of chaos pet items. It’s not that many anyway, and the BiS items have all been established by sigatrev n Maya.
EDIT: BTW, I like this helm because if its proc. So whatever the changes it will be, hope the proc stays the same… 
