Shield Mastery on an evoker FvS

[nni]

I'm currently levelling an evoker FvS with 3 Wiz past lives. I've been toying with the idea of taking shield mastery at 18. What is everyone's opinion on this feat, post update 14 and considering EE difficulty?

My feat choice at higher levels will boil down to whether I want to be able to pierce EE drow SR. If I do, then I will have to take all 3 spell pen feats. If I don't, then I have a lot more leeway into what feats to take (extra spell focus, shield mastery, epic stat, etc).

[unbongwah]

Shield Mastery took a big defensive nerf in U14; 10 PRR from SM w/tower shield is only 6.2% dmg reduction, whereas pre-U14 it was 20%. I don't consider that enough of a defensive buff to be worthwhile on a feat-starved caster. Unless Turbine decides to unnerf it - or you plan to pick up ISM feat & twist in Legendary Shield Mastery for more PRR - I consider SM just for S&B tanks.

[Brennie]

I agree with Unbongwah. Furthermore, how do you have any spare feats? Evokers have a lot of "must have" feats, and with the capstone and some destiny effects, as well as recent changes to spellpower and heal/mass heal (not to mention the absurd amount of hitpoints many players can hit nowadays) I feel like "Empower heal" is rapidly rising in the "must have" list.

Must Haves: Toughness, Evo Focus, greater evo focus, max, empower, quicken, heighten

Which leaves one heroic and two epic feats to choose between: Epic Spell Focus, Epic Wisdom, Empower Heal, Spell pen/greater spell pen/epic spell pen.

There are already too many strong options for the now thoroughly reduced Shield Mastery to be a real contender (Besides which, epic levels cause you to change your weapon setup a lot, just to keep up your various sources of spellpower. My FvS has his light damage and healing weapon sets with shields, but his untyped damage, implosion, and destruction sets have a caster stick in the offhand)

[nni]

Which leaves one heroic and two epic feats to choose between: Epic Spell Focus, Epic Wisdom, Empower Heal, Spell pen/greater spell pen/epic spell pen.

Exactly. I have 3 feat slots after all the essentials. I can either go spell pen all the way, or add the other feats you mentioned. I was just wondering whether shield mastery is still considered viable. It doesn't seem like it, considering that mobs on epic hard don't deal enough damage to warrant it and mobs on epic elite deal too much damage for it to be good enough.

Thanks for the replies

[erikbozelie]

heavy armor proficiency would add 11PRR for just 1 feat. it would be a better investment then the 2 shield feats.

[Ancient]

I burned through several LR's on my FVS trying to find a PRR setup that worked. I ended up spending my spare feat on epic toughness.... here is why:

On Epic Normal/Epic Hard you don't need PRR, it is simply that easy.

On Epic Elite going from 10% dmg reduction to 20% dmg reduction didn't increase my survival rate. When mobs hit for close to 200, a 10% physical damage reduction meant that I died in about 4 hits. With a 20% dmg reduction... I still died in about 4 hits.