I didn't even see an Underdog Shield But Snitrick's is obviously better anyway. 2500 gold is a large investment, but it will repay itself in farming
How will a shield repay itself in farming exactly? Sorry, but I just can't see buying Snitrick's shield unless I was loaded. I mean, I love it, but is it really necessary for farming? Can't you just use Ricochet Buckler or Spellthwart Shield? Even if you are fighting slimes, they tend to discard your Wounded Blocks with pseudopod strikes anyways. You could make do with Icicle Shield, Underdog's Shield, etc before blowing the wad on Snitrick's.
It increases the chances of survival for your priest, and for your wizards too. Icy Block is good versus giant monsters, Wounded Block will work against both melee and ranged attacks unlike Missile Block. If you have better blocks, you spent less time to win and earn more gold per hour.
I wouldn't suggest going broke in order to buy that shield. While Snitrick's certainly has its uses, the shield slot is one in which good replacements are plentiful. Healing Handmace, on the other hand, is an insta-buy. I'd snatch that without any regret.
Can you suggest a better tokenless shield for the Firestorming? I guess not. As long as Firestorming is the most popular farming strategy, it's worth the gold.
Keeping in mind EL Hobbito specifically mentioned PvP and the fact he said purchasing the shield (on top of the mace) would make him go broke. I'm not suggesting better shields (for whatever use) are there, but rather that good and cheaper alternatives can be found. If you want to talk FSing then, depending on the specific map you're going to farm, one among the following will do a perfectly fine job, and you'd save the 2000+ gold. White Shield, Twisting Shield, Maple Shield, Spellthwart Shield, Ricochet Buckler, Hooked Chimalli, Hexagon Shield, Black Buckler, Underdog's Shield, Icicle Shield, Bullseye Shield, Big Ash Shield Point being, not everybody can afford to spend all of their gold carelessly on a whim, so giving them good suggestions also means putting the "You really oughta buy this" items apart from the "This is cool, but you'll do just fine fine without it" ones So, in this specific case, I don't feel like suggesting El Hobitto should spend all of his gold on both the Mace and Shield. Unless he can realiably farm 2500+ gold in a bunch of days. But, by reading his message, I'd say that's not the case, so my best advice would be buying the Mace and letting the shield be. Firestorm farming is easily enough done even if you don't own the absolute top shield for the purpose.
What am I missing? Firestormers (wizards) can't equip shields at all... You don't need healing in SP.
Personally, I can't think of any shields that are needed for firestorm builds. There's plenty of other options that wouldn't require the gold. On a similar note, I can't think of any legendary shields that demand a purchase, or ones that I would recommend buying for anyone other than completionists. They tend to do "interesting" things, but nothing incredible. If the idea is to build towards a better farming deck, the best advice I can think of is to save your gold for legendaries with multiple firestorms. Don't worry about items like this.
I think they are talking about FS teams with a support Priest. I use one right now because to spread out my FS over 3 Wizards doesn't make sense. I can saturate 2 wizards pretty well. But as my FS collection grows I may swap back to 3 Wizards. I use the Priest to accelerate through card draw and occasional healing due to Combustible.
I see that people here don't understand why do I recommend buying some Legendary items. So I have to describe my buying strategy, without insisting that it's the only true strategy or even the best one. But it works for me, and should work for everyone. My rule is simple: all items that are the best in some category or for some strategy should be bought. It doesn't matter if the strategy isn't the most popular or most playable now; this can change every day. It doesn't matter whether you are going to use the strategy right now or not; you just need to collect the best items to be able to play this strategy some day. Following this rule, Hand Of Vicna should be bought, since it's the best Wall of Stone item (maybe, second only to Twizel's Stone Talisman if you have a yellow token), and Snitrick's Shield also should be bought as the best shield for the Firestorming priest. It doesn't matter that there are "not much worse" items: not much worse is still worse! What do I do when I don't have the gold? Spend some money, of course. If you spend $50 per month, you get 1800 pizza, which is enough to buy 3 Legendary items and some epics. We all know that Randimar doesn't bring us the good legendaries every week, so that would be enough. There are crappy legendaries, and in many cases the legendary item isn't the best in its category (i.e. most best boots are epic, as well as many of the best weapons). Can you afford $50 per month? Of course you can! Most of you guys live in the countries with the high quality of life, and I'm living in Belarus, but even I can afford that What you cannot afford is skipping the best items in favor of the "not much worse" items - this will lead you to the much much worse decks For instance, I am going to buy Quellic's Boots this week, since they are the best armored boots in the game. I don't know where I will use them, and whether I will use them at all - they are the best, and that's enough. I am going to skip on Lt. Buckwell's Boots since I have Garalem's Boots that IMHO are better. Eventually I may regret of skipping the boots, but I will never regret of buying the extra boots This game is called Cardhunter, and it's all about collecting the items. El Hobbito, I am pretty sure that a Firestorming team with a Priest is more effective and easier to build than 3 wizards (you don't need 6 staves and 12 arcane items). As long as Snitrick's Shield is the best shield for the priest, it should be bought. Period. You can afford it, and you cannot afford skipping it. If you're going to wait until Randimar brings you something better - it's up to you. You may prefer buying 5 good epics to this shield. You may get this shield from the random chests in the future. But you may never see the shield again as well, if you skip it now. The choice is yours.
I don't know about El Hobbito, but I do hope CH never sees a shortage of players ready to spend $50 per week on the game. If that's the case, then BM is going to support this game for a damn long time Anyways, I'm not trying to make a point. I felt like sharing my own take on the item and I feel like now plenty of info is available for Hobbito to be able to take an informed decision of his own.
I swap a priest in and out for FS. At low levels she's the tank, at high levels she's a healer/draw priest. I usually use Twisting Shield, Spellthwart Shield, or Parrying Buckler depending upon the foes and the tokens available. I have a couple of Snitrick's Shields, and may try one on my next run.
Interesting, I always run 2 wizards and a priest. I find it helps me use firestorm on a lot more of the mid to higher level adventures. I personally don't care for icy block. Most of the things in SP I want to encumber are big mean melee types, mainly as a way to keep these things from getting adjacent and killing me. Icy Block requires you to get adjacent (which is a bad idea), wait for them to hit you (which is a really bad idea), then rely on a 4+ save in order to put an encumber on them (no thanks on relying on a coin flip to block). So even in the best case scenario if you got lucky and made the roll and now they're encumbered, at that point you still need another move to get away or it's quite likely the big mean melee monster is going to keep hitting you. Does this sound like a winning strategy? To me, it sounds like a faster way to die.
One more thing about shields, which I think it really important. You don't have to use the same shield all the way through an adventure, you can swap it out each level. What this means is that you can bring in melee blocks against melee enemies and ranged blocks against the smaller number of ranged opponents you see in SP. Few levels mix both (mostly at higher levels), and even when they do you normally only have a need to block one or the other. Wounded block's only real advantage is that it blocks both ranged and melee attacks, but you very rarely actually need that. So if you're deciding on a no-token cost shield: Do you need to block melee attacks? The Twisting Shield is hard to beat. Ignore the extra effect of pushback parry, that's all gravy, it's a 2+ melee block which is very reliable. Hard to pin down is a 3+ block and movement. Why would you bother with things like wounded block? It's a 5+ block that only improves to 3+ when you're half dead. These other blocks are both better options. Do you need to block ranged attacks? The Spellthwart Shield or Maple Shield offer a lot more consistency. Again, compare these to the weaker wounded block.
You don't always get to choose, especially in SP where you can encounter the very fast enemies, the flying enemies, an enemy with 60 HP and devastating attacks and so on. Sometimes you can just choose which of your characters is going to block the passage and die winning you an extra turn - and that's going to be the priest since the wizards hopefully can finish off the monster on the next turn. That said, why do you think Icy Block is your only defense? My priest has Holy Knight Armor with Absolem's Leather Shoes and Advanced Toughness at the mid levels. If the Icy Block wouldn't trigger, then it may be Jarring Block or Toughness, or the armor. And if the Icy Block will trigger at last (the chances are pretty good for the several attacks), then you're almost guaranteed to kill the monster with your wizards. Pardon? There are few levels with *only* melee or *only* ranged enemies. Plus, if you really do remember all levels, I can applaud to you, but my memory isn't that good Plus, if you change your equipment between levels, that increases your farming time. Wounded block is a "block any" with 3+, which is pretty decent for a tokenless shield. If you farm only Diamond Mines, then you probably can live without "block any" cards, but you're going to catch the Loot Fairy, aren't you?
I'm sure Oberon knows his builds and all the adventures. He is THE MAN when it comes to farming SP. Different people like different things, and build according to what they like as well as what they have. Exchanges of ideas are good - I got much better at farming by reading posts by Oberon and Jarmo.
I guess I'm just too lazy to farm a lot and remember all the details Plus, I'm playing a lot of games simultaneously, and they're draining my time. If you want to have just one universal farming party like me, you should appreciate Snitrick's Shield. Anyway, what are you going to use for the scenarios with both magic and melee?
I truly hope this was meant entirely in a joking manner. It is both highly presumptuous and offensive to claim to know what is appropriate spending for someone that you know nothing more about than that they play a computer game. I do live a country with a high quality of life, but that doesn't mean that I have X amount of money. Every country has poor people. There are high school students in my country that can tell you which dumpsters are mostly likely to have food in them before school starts, because without that knowledge they don't get breakfast. And if one of those students plays CH on the school's library computers at lunch to distract themselves from the hardships of their life, you think they can afford $50 a month just because you can?! If you want to make the incorrect assumption that everyone should be able to find a way to get every "best" item that pops up and Randimar's you go right ahead, but the next time you want to make a broad sweeping presumption about people's financial state and where it's most appropriate for them to spend their money, please hold your tongue.
Even within countries with a "high quality of life", spending $200 monthly on gaming is not really that much commonplace. But alas, I'm pretty sure Ector totally meant it in a positive way. We don't need more drama to ensue, and the whole topic is completely off-topic anyways. Let's cut this short while we still can!