Revisiting after recent changes just to see the current status. Here are some vids with most of the Setups that have been tried durring the years:
BWC spec https://youtu.be/SZgqtj_SVAc
This one was kinda the most intuitive one considering BWC offers kinda everything the build lacked, however it lacked huge in sustain and qol departments.
Pure aegis + judicators spec https://youtu.be/ka7cAv0hqf0
At some point we decided to give a go for judicators for that instant appliance of both flat RR and % reduced. Worked to some extent, but the sustain + qol issue remains.
Fire Strike spec https://youtu.be/8AFDYaOTdNc
“Surely autoattacks will save it” - not really. Autoattack spec requires you to grab Light of Empyrion and that devo route eats up a lot of damage and other important stats like, attack speed, life steal and especially %damage and OA.
“Let’s try Permascension!” (LoE+TD spec) https://youtu.be/rslN4jGcpCM
Self explanatory in comparison to the other vids.
“We have a lot of +skills for Oathkeeper, let’s go RF+WPS” https://youtu.be/V6Lq5QYtvG8
We do have skill points, but not nearly enough.
Last, but not least my most recent setup…
“We need damage reduction and good leech inbetween aegis casts, but we also need flats and leech from devos” (EoR spec) https://youtu.be/ab70KgnxYZQ
This setup was kinda the only one that made sense. We get to keep a proper devo route that pushes aegis to its max limits, bonus points we get the much needed damage reduction from EoR via Soulfire and… Surprise, surprise we just knocked at the door of one of the currently worst skills in the game while also making the worst mixup possible (channeling skill with long wind up animation + nuke with long BWC-like animation) while grabbing all possible speed stats and leech stats, yet the results aren’t exactly what one would expect.
Note: Ravager is totally out of discussion on this one. Even Viper + Prismatic diamond + 2x soul shards cannot save it from the energy leech those pools have.
Conclusion from my experiments and experiences
I don’t even know where to start so i’ll just stick to 2 hypothesis:
Assuming the set is staying as it currently is it would need the following:
15-20% total speeds on shield
missing cdr on the helm
2x burn damage to aegis (this is really needed, you immediately notice how your damage goes down vs single targets)
better radius to base skill + avenging shield
Shield throw animation needs to be shorter (even with capped casting speed its very easily interruptable)
EoR fixed so it actually works as an inbetween attack
Assuming reworks are an option i would suggest the following:
cut down its cooldown to 0, and its weapon damage by 40% (please do not use - % Total damage modified, because it destroys the dot part of the skill). We’d want the ability to spam the skill without destroying the game, but still with decent damage output, but at the same time we like to keep this nice burn thematic
casting speed on the shield instead
permascension is still not easily achievable, however if the set goes into spam mod with the wd% to aegis reduced, %damage will become more important for the skill, and so will investing in Ascension
did i mentioned it would actually be an unique build?
I invite others to share from their own experience, but with actually links to videos and proof.
I played this version of it. It’s not too bad but still rather underwhelming compared to what you can play as a Shiedlbreaker or Oathkeeper in general.
Aegis is just a very clunky skill to use with any sort of a filler. And the set identity is kinda blurred because the set basically tries to play Aegis “as is”, and this skill as is - is not good. Hence all the influx of stats on the set, buffed cdr, buffed shield proc, buffed Ascension mods. If you buff it enough, eventually it will be good, yes, but it wont fix the set identity.
Most solo mastery sets manage to do smth interesting that sets the gameplay a little bit apart. Virtue and Ultos are exceptions. Wrote about Ultos in another topic. Virtue tries to play solo a more or less stock Aegis, and this skill is simply not enough to make it solo.
Another point i forgot to mention: Keeper’s fire relics are dogwater, absolute bums. Absolution is kinda passable for retal but Honor is ass. Look at the chad Korvaak, Iskandra or Combustion. Even Bane is decent. And look at Honor and Absolution, these are so so weak for direct dmg. Can’t take them and it makes you miss on Keeper’s skillpoints, like i have 25/26 Aegis in my build.
I agree Honor works better for retal builds, but it also provides extra damage to human, this helps you deal with ironmaiden faster, which is useful for fire builds. The granted skil has 5 projectiles with 50% wd for each, so it exactly has some damage.
For some phys warlord, I prefer to use Honor as well.
I personally would hate such changes to make it an aegis spam set.
I have a RF + WPS version similar to your 5 that is one of my favourite characters to play, and I feel it is much smoother than the EoR version. (Because as you note the start/stop isn’t exactly great. Aegis spam would kind of nix that concept.
Mine is a Templar though, which reduces clunkyness because no thermite mines (Honestly, Thermite mines are a pain) and helps with skillpoints. (But of course reduces it to single RR. But more OA and damage compensates. You really need that OA to benefit from the huge crit damage.)
I wouldn’t mind a few buffs, and making EoR smoother so it can be combined with other skills would be great, but I don’t feel at all deprived with the current set.
Virtue was the set I tried to use on my very first character. And it only took me 500h to get the first piece …
But anymay, I for sure would like to see the set buffed. I dont think my build (S&B RF Shieldbreaker) is the best in the game, but I still feel like Virtue is missing something.
First, bonus radius to Aegis. It feels a bit meh when you launch your shield and only get that small yellow frisbe… And even an almost hardcapped Avenging Shield does not do much.
Second, just like Jason_the_Iguana, I’m not sure a 0CD AoM is the answer. I would rather go the other way, like +1s CD and +x% total damage, to make it a big nuke. Or alternatively, x% chance to deal +500% fire damage and +500% burning damage (numbers are random), again to get a “big” nuke.
Third, am I the only one who think the full set should get a granted skill ? Why not give it a passive buff like +15 Fire damage, +100 OA (again, random numbers). It would work with AoM, RF, EoR, WPS and would give some much needed OA to benefit from the massice crit bonus from Avenging Shield.
Alson is the AoM not linking to close target a big or a feature ? Cause that is really annoying when it doesnt chain to a mob one feet away from your target…
I don’t have a youtube account or tools to record gameplay videos. But the point is not to argue that build X can do shattered realm in Y seconds.
The feedback is that some players are using and enjoying the current the set in its current state too, and changing it on a fundamental level (from cooldown AoM to spam AoM) so that current builds are no longer supported would disappoint us.
This is not the point… the point is the playstyle is extremely clunky by the way the interacting skills are designed. That is what we want to get fixed mainly.
This does not help with the feedback…
Thats why i suggested 2 variants, one for fixing the current set, one for reworking it into a trully unique playstyle. And btw, if you dont like a spam version and you choosed to speak up, that doesn’t people dont want it xD.
Both me and @banana_peel tried this in several iterations and unfortunately the extra OA and pp crit damage from arcanist tree does not compensate, especially vs super resistants. Fyi, its not my intention to shut you down, just pointing out facts. I can share our templar version too just to point out the flaws if needed.
One relic for 8% more damage to Maiden doesnt qualify it as a good relic for Virtue set im afraid.
+1. At best, absolution would be a great relic if we had the means to fully convert acid to fire, but even like it currently is, its the least worse choice. Despite the OA+DA being needed from Korvaak relic + ulzuin belt, i think you cannot give up on absolution.
Also i wanted to mention that the shield proc still has too long cd and too small wd%.
While I’m sure there are also people who WOULD like Aegis spam on the set, with an established game like this I think that changing skills in a way that breaks existing characters costs more than enabling new options brings.
People have been playing this game for years and have characters they enjoy using. A patch coming out that suddenly invalidates these existing characters is very frustrating. Someone else getting to try a new combo doesn’t really compensate for that.
(For the same reason I’m ambivalent about the upcoming upheaval changes. Good idea from a game balance perspective? Sure. Will it break my Blazerush Elementalist? I’m afraid it will. But on the other hand, that was a pretty niche build and upheaval didn’t work that great on it anyway, so I’m not objecting too strongly there.)
Also happened before. The immediate example that comes to my mind is when nightblade conduit with +1 summon to blade spirits got reworked and suddenly a lot of players started complaining that their build became unplayable when in reality the blade spirits dealt some 50k crits at best .
Its not someone else, but everyone.
It also broke mine too, yet im very happy with this particular change because it never worked great to begin with, moreso i was so frustrating when landing 5-6 consecutive hits without upheaval proccing when i really needed it to.
I also like the idea of spam Aegis of Menhir on full Virtue Set, would be something unique. You can still charge your Righteous Fervor attacks all the way you want, right? Nobody takes it from you, same as somebody combines Eye of Reckoning with Aegis of Menhir.
Not that unique when we already have the much requested conduit for it. IMO a good way to give the set some uniqueness would be to make it so that the Aegis splits into multiple on first impact, kinda like PRM except with homing and bouncing afterwards. It would be a nice boost to both AoE and single target if multi-pulling, as the forking effect would create more projectiles to bounce back to the original target. Questionable, of course, if such a modification is possible in the engine.
Point of showing all of those videos is to showcase the clunk factor and the limitations from how this skill interacts with every other skill. Its not about the clear times as much as it is about fixing the way some skills interact with eachother. @banana_peel can also confirm how this interaction between aegis and everything else is simply horrible. But since you brought up the clear times aspect, clear is mostly ok if you somehow get very high density maps, otherwise the single target damage output goes down pretty fast. My suggestions from point 1 conclusions can surely provide a real fix in that aspect, but i’d like to hear others opinions too.
You can imagine that i don’t have the luxury of time to test each and every one of my 30 iterrations every time a new patch goes live, unless it becomes a paid job .
Kind of curious, but what was the mindset for the Vitrue set gameplay design ? Considering it’s a Oathkeeper-focused set, was it mostly fire damage and heay reliance on AoM ?
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when in reality the blade spirits dealt some 50k crits at best 
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