ele, shield or not?

[Deleted]

Hi, I realise this might be a silly question but i have to ask it anyways. So I had a 502 ilvl shield from ToT lfr and i got a held in of-hand 528 which is better by stats, should I use it or is there some minus to not have a shield as a shaman ?

[Grym]

Shields used to be better as they generally have more sockets and shields used to be able to be enchanted whereas off hand does not.

Since Cata they tried to "equalise" everything now shields and off hand pretty much exactly the same, so go for whatever higher/better stats.

[Drogotaar]

Both are equal, if you happen to raid hc content and every bit of armor counts, you may favor shields.

[zenga]

On a fight like grand empress heroic, there was a physical ability that did quite a lot of damage, forgot the name. While I had a pretty sexy staff back then, I swapped to my lesser 1h/shield combo during the fight when I had no cd's/there were no raid wide cd's, since we were 3healing it (instead of 4). It meant the difference to staying a life all the time and dying now and then. Just because of armor mitigating physical dmg. But those fights are situational. So having a decent shield as backup when needed is a must, but going with a staff or offhand doesn't harm at all.

[GKLeatherCraft]

To be honest I always use shields, Why? Because they look better IMO lol, But if you have something that's that much better use it, the stat differences are really high at the moment between with more than like a 10 ilvl difference.

[Soisoisoi]

Use whatever has the best stats. Very rarely will a shield make any difference, and in that case it would only be because of the extra armour to reduce physical damage (think Heart of Fear).

[Deleted]

Shield can be enchanted with 165 intellect but given it's weapons, highest ilvl one will pretty much always win. If given the choice a shield would be better yeah. I take 21% less physical damage with my 543 equiped which is nothing to sniff at if there's any sort of physical (aoe) damage outgoing.

[Nebria]

On a fight like grand empress heroic, there was a physical ability that did quite a lot of damage, forgot the name. While I had a pretty sexy staff back then, I swapped to my lesser 1h/shield combo during the fight when I had no cd's/there were no raid wide cd's, since we were 3healing it (instead of 4). It meant the difference to staying a life all the time and dying now and then. Just because of armor mitigating physical dmg. But those fights are situational. So having a decent shield as backup when needed is a must, but going with a staff or offhand doesn't harm at all.

there was some twitter or blue post long ago that some special abilities even if they are physical damage do not recognize armor cause it would deal different damage to players which would be an imbalance. unfortunately I didn't find it anymore. so I wouldn't expect that shield is always better in such situations. however it helps against adds which might hit me^^

[Axelond]

Higher ilvl is always better.

However if you had a off-hand and a shield with same Ilvl and sockets I would always pick the shield even if it had a bit worse stats. Because even though the armor looks pointless It can help you on a lot of mechanics. For example Deafening Screech will hit for less if you have an extra 20k armor.

Lets say you have about 30k armor (mid 550 gear has around 30k) that's according to (Armor / (Armor + 46257.5)) * 100 for level 90s is about a 39% damage reduction. Adding an extra 20k armor on top of that is 52% damage reduction.

So with a shield the Deafening Screech should hit for around 210k instead of 267k and that's a pretty huge difference just from sacrificing like 600 spirit for 600 mastery which wont even give you a 1% healing gain.

Looked at a my last kill on Thok and Deafening Screech definitely gets reduced by armor

Actually looking at the gains from a shield I would consider swapping a higher ilvl off-hand for a lower ilvl shield on fights with a lot of physical damage. For SoO that would be Thok the Bloodthirsty (Phase 1 is mainly physical), Malkorok (Stack phase is all physical)

[Deleted]

The only fight where a shield is really going to make a big difference is Iron Juggernaut. You can essentially soak crawler mines without any CDs up if you use a shield. There are more bosses that use physical damage and it reduces that damage quite a lot (see Axelonds explanation), but it usually isn't a big deal if you don't have a shield on those bosses.

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there was some twitter or blue post long ago that some special abilities even if they are physical damage do not recognize armor cause it would deal different damage to players which would be an imbalance. unfortunately I didn't find it anymore. so I wouldn't expect that shield is always better in such situations. however it helps against adds which might hit me^^

From what I could tell at least, Iron Prison on Dark Shamans does physical damage but goes right through your armor. That just makes classes with more cooldowns and lower armor better, though.