by Hotstreak - 8 years ago     show comments

Books have often been society’s only bastion of light for passing along knowledge that would otherwise be lost to time or convoluted by the oral tradition. In order to provide new and old adventurers with as much knowledge of what to expect on their journey in Sanctuary, we created this tome of knowledge – Ars Arcanum. We will regularly feature a Legendary weapon or armor piece, discussing its stand-alone powers and capabilities, as well as how it may synergize with new builds or other item

This week on Ars Arcanum we will be taking a look at Spirit Guards. These bracers have been a very popular item in the Monk meta ever since their introduction in Season 3. Since they bring some much needed utility and reward players who like to use Spirit Generators and be in the middle of the battle.

Why is it good?

When pushing Greater Rifts or any sort of more challenging content, more survivability is always welcomed. Which is exactly what Spirit Guards bring to the table by decreasing the damage you take by 30-40% from enemies when attacking with SGs For a long time during Diablo 3’s lifespan, it was almost unheard of to be using any SG in your build at endgame. There were simply just better options and skills that you could be using that slot for.

This all changed in Reaper of Souls with the introduction of Spirit Guards and the reworked Shenlong’s Spirit weapon set to help promote that style of play. Which is a product of Blizzard’s design philosophy for making SGs more appealing and useful.

This item has great synergy with Shenlong’s and the Raiment of a Thousand Storms set, so lets go into why they have such good synergy by looking at their set bonuses.

Raiment of a Thousand Storms

• (2) Set:
• Your Spirit Generators have 25% increased attack speed and 300% increased damage.
• (4) Set:
• Dashing Strike spends 75 Spirit, but refunds a Charge when it does.
• (6) Set:
• Your Spirit Generators increase the weapon damage of Dashing Strike to 12500% for 6 seconds.

Shenlong’s Spirit

• The damage of your Spirit Generators is increased by 1.5% for each point of Spirit you have.
• When reaching maximum Spirit, all damage is increased by 100%, but you no longer passively regenerate Spirit and 65 Spirit is drained every second until you run out of Spirit.

Since both of these sets really focus on the use SGs, you’re going to have that damage mitigation buff up near 100% of the time during fights. Along with the damage reduction, you get a 25% attack speed and 300 % damage buff to your SGs from the 2 set bonus on RoaTS. You also get direct damage buffs to your SGs from the Shenlong’s weapon set to push your damage potential even further.

So when you put Spirit Guards together with them, you are getting an all around buff to survivability and damage which makes this build extremely attractive to players who want to push high end content.

Who is it good for?

Since the Affix on Spirit Guards is focused on Spirit Generators, it’s only useful for Monks.

Where can I find it?

This is not a Season Exclusive item so it can be found on any character on any mode.

The Fluff

The Patriarchs say that when the spirit waxes, the dangers of this world wane.