Strategy:Fireshield

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Do you just really hate the VMR? Is the Cyberdemon just too tough and you don't want to invest into Dodgemaster? Are John Carmack's rockets just too much to handle? Well with this assembly you'll get a shield with 4 protection and a 95% resistance to fire, making you nigh-immune to fire damage as it'll reduce any fire hit to a single point of damage, while it boasts a 200% durability that will allow it to protect you from fire damage for a very very long time. However in addition to requiring Whizkid 1 and two other mods, it comes with a very steep cost of requiring an Onyx mod. Besides the rarity of an Onyx mod, using an Onyx mod to create this would mean giving up the opportunity to get an infinite durability armor for something that doesn't have infinite durability and can't be repaired at all without getting a Megasphere. That extra 100% durability will make this last near forever against enemies that deal fire damage, you could take even 200 Arch-vile blasts in this before it would get destroyed, and since this is a shield it won't lose any of its protection when its durability drops below 50%. But this will do little to prevent plasma enemies from hitting you hard, and even with 200% durability Barons will still brutalize your Fireshield; eat a few acid balls and you may already find yourself in danger of losing the Fireshield you expended an Onyx mod on.

While a Fireshield is the best thing to have when dealing with VMR and other fire enemies, for its cost this is really an assembly of questionable worth. A basic and easy to make Fireproof Red Armor protects you very well against fire enemies as is while having the same ingredients of a Fireshield minus that vital Onyx mod; sure it won't reduce all fire hits to 1 damage, but only taking 5 damage from an Arch-Vile blast should be more than enough protection most of the time, and you'll be able to repair it without relying on finding a lucky Megasphere should it get damaged by Barons and Arachnotrons. Then while you have that Fireproof Red Armor instead, you can use your leftover Onyx mod to make another armor with infinite durability so you'll never have to worry about Barons destroying your armor for the rest of your run, or use it to make Lava boots to get lava immunity without having to go through the big effort of creating Cerberus boots. If you get Whizkid 2 first you could even make yourself an infinite durability Fireproof Red armor for the same mod cost as a Fireshield.

Probably the only time a Fireshield is worth it over the alternatives is if you find an Onyx mod near the end of the game after you already modded out your main armor while you have a spare Red Armor with a Technical and Bulk mod on hand, where the cost is relatively less severe and it's more feasible to have it last through the rest of the game, while VMR density is at its highest and you'll have the JC battle in the near future if you're going for a full win. If you do make a Fireshield at an earlier time (e.g. shortly after Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab where you'll probably obtain an Onyx mod if you get one at all during your run), it's imperative you limit exposure to Barons and plasma enemies as much as you can to get as much mileage as you can from this shield's primary purpose of fire protection; each acid ball from a Baron can do as much as 20-30ish damage to your Fireshield, which means that's 20-30ish less hits you could have taken from the VMR, and Arachnotrons will do decent damage to it too. If its durability gets critically low, you should try to hold off on using it any more until you can hopefully come across a Megasphere to repair it, but if the opportunity for other good armor comes along before then and that nearly-destroyed Fireshield is taking up vital inventory space, don't let the fact you expended an Onyx mod on it keep you from ditching it. Conversely in this situation you could instead just ride it out until it's destroyed, as no matter how damaged it is any fire hit will still do just 1 damage and even with little durability left it could take quite a few more fire hits for you before its destruction. Omega Tyrant (talk) 03:05, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

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