If you find a 'Superior' piece of armor with +Enhanced Defense, a Superior Weapon with +Enhanced Damage or a Helm/Weapon that has +Skill bonuses for a certain class, all of these will remain on the final Rune Word that is created. Keep in mind that all Rune Words you create will retain any pre-existing bonuses found on the item. Using a Call to Arms with a Spirit Rune Word will increase the Skill Level of these abilities. Call to Arms grants the player Battle Command and Battle Orders, Barbarian Skills that boost the Health, Mana and Stamina as well as Skill Levels of you and your allies. Monarchs, Wards and Aegis' are the only 3 non-Paladin shields in the game that can roll 4 Sockets and you won't be able to find any of these until late Nightmare or Hell difficulty.īuilds that do not use a Spirit Rune Word in their primary line up can still find use of this Rune Word by using it in combination with a Call to Arms Rune Word.

Despite it having a level requirement of 25 this Rune Word can only be placed in shields with 4 Open Sockets which (aside from Paladin Shields) are extremely rare. That would be kind of nice to have three different shield choices for builds using Spirit instead of all of them using Monarch.Spirit is one of the best Shield Rune Words in the game and also one of the most commonly used ones because of the +2 Skills benefit. There is also the fact that the Pavise reduces Run/Walk by 10%, Ancient Shield by 5%, and Blade Barrier/Monarch by 0%. And if you want higher defense that you get from an Elite shield, the Blade Barrier makes a decent choice over the Ancient Shield or the Pavise, maybe even the Monarch over Pavise if wearing Enigma and going for max block. However, if you are making a max block build the Pavise is better, 23 more strength, but you save almost three times as much in dex. is the most important thing, obviously the Ancient Shield will be chosen. True, Monarch would probably drop out as the shield of choice but adding the above three would give some decent differentiation choices. Monarch, 156 Strength, Block Chance Pal 52% Sorc 42%, lvl 54, 148 Defense

Pavise, 133 Strength, Block Chance Pal 54% Sorc 44%, lvl 25, 78 Defense Adding Blade Barrier, Ancient Shield, and Pavise to the list of four socketed shields would mean the following comparisons:Īncient Shield, 110 Strength, Block Chance: Pal 46% Sorc 36%, lvl 25, 93 Defenseīlade Barrier, 118 Strength, Block Chance Pal 50% Sorc 40%, lvl 51, 163 Defense

4 socket shield diablo 2 spirit