I think of upgrading a Herald of Zakarum, I am a little hesistant. There is a level of 'risk' involved if I recall. When you upgrade a Herald of Zakarum it re-rolls the base defence of the shield. When a Herald of Zakarum is a Gilded shield it already has the best possible defence of a Gilded Shield. When you upgrade the worst defence roll of a Zakarum Shield is only slightly higher than a Gilded Shield. Therefore, dependant upon the roll you get, you can actually have a lower Defence HoZ than originally. As a reference: Gilded Shield's maximum defence is 168. Zakarum Shield's defence range is 169-193.
yep, only retards up eth things, because you end up with an item that is identical to a non eth upped one, only it's eth, and you can't socket it with anything but a zod.
It loses the 50% defense from the ethereal bonus. So you have a shield that in defense is the same as a non ethereal upped HoZ , yet it can still break , so you need to Zod it. The only "advantage" is that it requires 10 less strenght. But by that logic you can put a -15% req / .... jewel in your upped non eth HoZ , and have even less of a requirements.
The base defense of any HoZ (or any armor with +% defense, except Pul Runes) is 169. Armors with +% defense always have max+1 as their base defense. The defense can actually stay the same. Odds for that to happen are 1 in 25 upgrades.
