Sara's Guide To The Bone Bear - Topic

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Mar 10 2010 04:59pm

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SARA'S CTC BONE BEAR GUIDE 4.2

Introduction
Howdy peeps, I'm Sara and a self admitted d2 junky , character experimenter and veteran hardcore player. I've been playing long enough that Ive done all the cookie cutters and what I find I enjoy most is putting together obscure items with skills choices you wouldn't ordinarily use and then trying to maximize efficiency so that I can walk thru the entire game with it. As another oldschool player put it "I make ugly builds". Anytime your doing something a little different your bound to fail sometimes and other times you strike gold. This build is the latter. It takes the shortcomings of a melee necro and then fixes those drawbacks. It then improves upon that by being more well rounded and adding some much needed AOE

Preamble

Q: So WTF is this character all about before I read thru another guide "TL' DR "
A: This is a well rounded character capable of slaying all monsters in his path with style. He has good life, decent damage, a killer merc. Does much better versus bosses then his bone casting counterpart while still being able to play as a bone nec if you swap items around since the skillset is very similar. Your a necro who transforms into bearform utilizing beast on switch and then equipping a Demon Machine Xbow for its juicy mods like the 100% chance to cast bonespear which we fully syngerise

Q: "But dont melee necro's suck? They attack slow, get no ar or damage boostings attacks and have low life.
A: Yes, I agree with all of this in normal circumstances, this build gets around those limitations by using bearform which adds extra damage, defense, a ton of life and most importantly a different ias table for smashing monsters to a pulp. Attack rating is covered from two sources. The Wep itself is ITD which will work on all fodder monsters, and the merc has infinnity which reduces enemies defenses 83% allowing you to get by with almost no ar vs champs, bosses and unq's.

Q: Sounds expensive
A: Perhaps. The self found player will not be making this character in this lifetime, however as far as end game builds are concerned this one is alot better then most

Q: So you actually have this character, and its not a theorycrafted build? You then play it on HC mode without deeding or taking an hour to kill a pack and smashing over 9000 juvs?
A: erm... yes !

Q: All I want to know is that it can pew pew monsters dead. Oh Can it use a Szacko?
A: While you could use Szacko , I wouldnt reccomend it, it'll cut down on the pew pew.

Character Goals For Hell-thy Play

Max res with light stack and sorb all
Minimum of 2500 life without bo after shifting , expect over 4K with
8fpa Melee attack
FHR - Minimum of 48% for a 8fpa recovery , 54% for a 7fpa and 86% for a 6fpa. FHR isnt super important on this build because of the bone armor and high life. I use the 48% bp on mine , but here's the numbers for the sake of being thorough.
Aim for around 8-10+ all skills to sup up that bearform. More is possible, but then your going to spend time swaping crap around from your stash prebuffing instead of slamming monsters. I call this goal prebuff light. It's quick without
needing much time and a heroic tetris effort at your stash.

Gieb Skillz noaw!

Pretty straight forward selection here. Your melee, and cannot cast anything and in order to have good ctc damage you'll have to devote "all" your points to the bone tree.This char essentially takes 91 skill points to complete, so its "done" at level 76. On the plus side you will have one damm sexy bone armor. Unshift recast and reshift between packs to refresh this and you'll tank in a massive way. I'd suggest putting the rest of your skill points in CE to help speed up your killing when you need to unshift around Iron Maiden and shoot your Xbow to avoid being IM fragged. Kill one and blow up the pack! CE

20 teeth
20 bone spirit
20 bonewall
20 bone prison
1 amp
1 in revives
1 in clay golem
1 in summon res
OS expected level
*level 12 Lycanthropy -75% life , 280 seconds

*Level 12 Werebear -Effect: This skill empowers the Druid with the capacity to assume the form of a savage bear, granting him great strength and fortitude.
127% damage
80% defense
50% life

+125% more life , hawt!

This leads to your level 18 bone spear ctc to be ;
Magic Damage: 1108-1174

I Can Haz Itamz?!

There is 2 essential items to make this character. Beast for Bearform and Brand.

Beast
Ber + Tir + Um + Mal + Lum
Axes/Scepters/Hammers - Caddies are the most stylish option, your's will probably be a Zerker Axe stolen from your BVC.

Quote

Level 9 Fanaticism Aura When Equipped
+40% Increased Attack Speed
+240-270% Enhanced Damage (varies)
20% Chance of Crushing Blow
25% Chance of Open Wounds
+3 To Werebear
+3 To Lycanthropy
Prevent Monster Heal
+25-40 To Strength (varies)
+10 To Energy
+2 To Mana After Each Kill
Level 13 Summon Grizzly (5 Charges)

This is only used for the druid OS , you will never be attacking with this.

Brand
Jah + Lo + Mal + Gul In a Demon Machine XBOW No Exceptions. This Runewords has no ias on it and being a shifter, it gets it's ias table driven by the wep. This is a -60 wsm , Thats double the speed of a Phaseblade!

Quote

35% Chance To Cast Level 14 Amplify Damage When Struck
100% Chance To Cast Level 18 Bone Spear On Striking
+260-340% Enhanced Damage (varies)
Ignore Target's Defense
20% Bonus to Attack Rating
+280-330% Damage To Demons (varies)
20% Deadly Strike
Prevent Monster Heal
Knockback
Fires Explosive Arrows or Bolts (15)

Holy shite that's an incredibly sexy list of mods. Itd works on all fodder monsters. When in Bear form you cannot cast any spells. Since your going to be melee'ing monster they will be hitting at you, and will then be amped. It's going to happen on every pack you come across. Setup as I suggest your going to be have 80%+ Deadly strike which doubles your damage and the amp ontop of that with 50% crushing blow. In many cases your going to be doing 4X your lcs ( -100 phy res, damage varies according to the monsters base res) QUAD DAMAGE

Hat Gface with ed%/ res
Armor Fort if your res charms are good, Coh otherwise
Gloves LOH's 350 damage to demons, ouch!
AmmyHighlords +1 and DS
BootsGores - ow,ds,cb
BeltTgods
Wep Brand Demon Xbow , duh
ring 1 Ravenfrost - cbf , ar , dex
ring2 dwarf - mdr, fire sorb , life
switch wep Beast Caddy
switch shield Spirit

Inventory

Get as fancy as you want, just meet the character goals. Your going to need a few FHR for the 48 bp, the rest will be Resistance until your maxed, then I'd focus on Max damage and ar charms. With the high deadly and amp going on a little max goes a long way.

a2 Might Merc
hat -Andy's , steal this when you shift to bearform for +2 and when you need it around IM for the ias on the xbow
Armor- Coh or fort, trade with your merc as needed.
Wep- Infinnity CA - yeah conviction is the solution to your AR

Thanks to CompanyofThree for getting on me to finally make a post for this build.

The End Product

4500 life ish
8fpa melee (way faster then a regular melee nec)
50% crushing blow
80% deadly strike
4-5K phy damage
1200 magic on every hit and this will hit multiple monsters
An Iron Maiden solution with the xbow and CE
Fully syngergised bone armor
Max res at 75, 75 90, 75 with fire, light and cold sorb

This post was edited by Master_Zappy on Mar 10 2010 05:25pm