I’ve been playing around with these two shields on Moze lately since they retain their effects while in Iron Bear.
I’ve found their area of effect damage counts as splash damage (I guess they’re really just nova shields that invisibly fire off each second), and it gets boosted by any AOE/splash bonuses you have in your gear or skills… with Moze it gets a little insane when you pile on everything you can (and I usually build Moze for maximum splash damage output.)
Running on non-mayhem TVHM, the Ember’s Blaze was hitting stuff for 11-12k damage, enough to instantly kill weaker fleshy enemies like skags as soon as they got in range. But I also found that if you’re holding a weapon with the 300/90 cartel anointment, it passes that 300% damage bonus along to the shield so it was hitting for 44k damage, pretty much instagibbing anything unshielded that came in range. I literally just strolled around the skag dens and Sun Smasher bandit camp in the Droughts and killed everything without firing a shot. Even an anointed zealot melted. Since it’s splash, it also procs Means of Destruction, Fire in the Skag Den, etc. The range can get pretty far out with Torgue Cross Promotion coming into play. Along with a relic that added +40% AOE damage, this was with a Mindsweeper COM that boosted TCP to 9/5 plus a +32% splash bonus… when I put on a Blast Master COM the damage could go up even higher, up to like 58k.
The Red Suit was much less effective, since the one I have deals out less damage overall and it’s radiation vs. flesh aside from the small FitSD bonus.
As expected this falls off in mayhem levels as the shield damage output can’t keep up, but on vanilla it’s pretty hilarious and I keep the Ember’s Blaze on as my go-to shield… I can focus on long-range targets with Iron Bear and not have to worry about melee attackers since they just roast in seconds (aside from fire-resist enemies.)
Edit: I forgot to mention, just to be clear you keep the 300/90 anointment bonus while you’re in Iron Bear as long as you’re holding that weapon when you summon him. That’s for the shield damage, I haven’t tested if that anointment passes along to IB’s actual weapons.
I also haven’t tested that other new anointment, the 200% while ASA one. If that one works with the shield while inside IB it could be even better because the damage won’t fall off if it’s hitting a tougher enemy that’s not instakilled in one tick.
now all i need is a way to get those shields in mayhem mode. maybe the new “veteran rewards” machine they teased for the next patch? something to scale them mission items up…
Let’s hope so. I wanted to get more use out of Ember’s shield, but the recent level caps have made it less viable. But I never thought to use it on Moze. I’ll have to work on getting her a lvl 57 one. It would be nice if the veteran rewards made the other rewards, like Bekah, available as well.
Or just put them into the loot pool once we’ve unlocked them via the Crew Challenges.
Down later in the thread we start realizing that Green Monster adds 100% splash damage when stacked to full. I used an Ember’s Blaze to create Blight Bear with a Green Monster. Torgue Cross Promotion does work. As do splash radius and aoe buffs.
AoE damage on an artifact, if not in the first position, also buffs the radius.
I have avoided points in Torgue Cross Promotion because I don’t want to hurt myself, and those odds are so low (both its trigger rate and that enemies are close enough to eat it). Semantically, I equate “size” to volume instead of diameter, which makes me think the range will be way less than I anticipate (and those odds have kept me away from testing to confirm, though your description makes me think it works like this).
Is the damage buff relatively new? As I check the stats on bl3skills.com, I’m not sure I noticed it before, but the site could be off (the damage might be enough to sell it for me).
As I think about it, Torgue Cross Promotion should expand/buff slam damage too? Regular shield novas? Spike shield damage? Frozen Snowshoe detonations? I don’t think Red Card detonations are splash…
I like the idea of using the Green Monster to enhance splash damage, but keeping it at max so that transfers to other stuff… pack an Infinity? I couldn’t quite tell from your video (though I only watched it sporadically as I’m on my way in to work).
Yeah, the Torgue Cross Promotion seems to cause the range to fluctuate. My guess is that the shield essentially fires off an invisible nova every second (an always-on Flame of the Firehawk without the visible nova blast essentially) and when the “nova” procs, TCP has a chance of buffing its range.
And yeah it gets really dangerous if you use splash damage weapons. I’ve instantly downed myself from what I thought was a good safe distance.
And that Blight Bear sounds fun! Time to farm up a good Green Monster…
I literally just strolled around the skag dens and Sun Smasher bandit camp in the Droughts and killed everything without firing a shot. Even an anointed zealot melted. Since it’s splash, it also procs Means of Destruction, Fire in the Skag Den, etc. The range can get pretty far out with Torgue Cross Promotion coming into play. Along with a relic that added +40% AOE damage, this was with a Mindsweeper COM that boosted TCP to 9/5 plus a +32% splash bonus… when I put on a Blast Master COM the damage could go up even higher, up to like 58k.
