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What’s really giving you high blade skill dmg in the end?

All the following is ofc on a high end min/maxed build, but it can help you understand why a high weapon dmg is not needed, at all.

+skills will give you up to 1,500 dmg added directly to your weapon dmg, after this weapon’s base dmg was reduced to 3/4.
So it doesn’t really matter how low or high your weapon dmg was, it’s close to irrelevant in the final equation.

Then the above dmg is multiplied by all your sources of off-weapon ed.
An optimized build would have things like
Claw mastery ~180ed
Phoenix 400ed
Pride 345ed
Fort (if no tele) 300ed
Str/dex modifiers

For something that could reach up to around +1400 off-weapon ed.
1,500 * 15 =22,500 base dmg per hit

Now add crit chance
~23% claw mastery
And DS chance
40% claw (2os 2x Lo)
15% gores
37% HL

For a combined total chance of ~94% crit
22,500 * 1.94 =43,650 dmg per hit

Add amp/decrep on top of that?
The numbers can get absurd haha

And now in D2R they reduced the fpa of blade fury from 6 to 5, so you hit 5 times per sec instead of 4.17.

5 * 43,650 =218,250 dps

All of that was calculated as if your weapon was dealing 0 dmg.

In your SSF journey, you should just aim to find a random fools claw.
Can be a plain magic with only fools prefix.
This charsi food claw is already better than the recommendation a lot of people still mention for bladesins : eDeath

And blade sentinels are also very good. So your WSM matters for trap laying speed.
If you find a random magic RT, you can cube it with 3 chip/norm/flaw gems and you’ll have 1/49 chance each reroll to get fools, with 50/50 chance for 2os, and possibly a suffix and even possible some usefull staffmods

This is your best bet to get s good weapon :)

Quote (SinsOfTheSun @ Aug 23 2025 10:54am)

Well the above is simply explaining why a simple magic claw with only 1 affix, fool’s, and 2os from larzuk (Lo+Lo) is already outperforming a perfect eDeath.

Then ofc this simple claw can easily be upgraded to a rare, with mods such as :
2 sin
Innate 2os (instead of larzuk on a magic claw)
+staffmods
40ias (laying trap speed for sentinels)
5% ctc amp
Eth + self rep (although its very minimal)

The 3 prefixes : fools, 2sin, 2os are so good that if your claw even has 300ed its far from being as good, cuz you’re missing one of the above.

Gear :
Enigma / fort
Phoenix
HL
LoH if pvm, pvp many options
Gores
Helm, many options… ideally a gg rare sin melee circ, but even guillaume can work on budget.

Trap skillers
36ar scs are much better than 3/20

Pride might merc, you want that juicy off-weapon ed%
Reaper is an alternative, but you lose overall dmg.
If your need a way to deal with immunes and you don’t have ctc amp, then using lacerator on swap will trigger it instantly with fury’s fast hits

Quote (SinsOfTheSun @ Aug 23 2025 11:13am)

Blade sentinel should be your main skill, both for pvm and pvp.

For pvm, the way it performs a hit check against each target, each second, with up to 5 sentinels up, means that it’s way more total dmg than blade fury only hitting a single target (with crazy dmg nonetheless). Fury is used against uniques/bosses mostly.

For pvp, fury’s animation start and the way it locks you in is sadly very clunky.
You’ll win way more duels if you don’t use it or at least if you use it extremely carefully.
Having 5 sentinels well placed, plus mind blast, will make it very hard for just about any build to fight you on your turf.

Skill allocation :
20 in all 3 blade skills (very important for the synergies)
20 claw mastery
Then most likely 20 fade
Up to 11 remaining points in prereqs, mind blast, clone if you want, etc.

Quote (SinsOfTheSun @ Aug 23 2025 01:14pm)

Here's a trick to get a good starter claw for free...

3 Standard Gems (normal) and 1 Socketed Weapon (Any Type) = 1 Socketed Magic Weapon (of same type)
ilvl=30 magic weapon with 1-2 sockets.

3 Chipped Gems + 1 Magic Weapon = Socketed Magic Weapon
ilvl=25 magic weapon with 1-2 sockets.

3 Flawless Gems + 1 Magic Weapon = Socketed Magic Weapon
ilvl=30 magic weapon with 1-2 sockets.

Using a Runic Talon, its qlvl 81 ensures that it can still roll fool's prefix even at ilvl 25 or 30 after rerolling with the formulas above.
I mention this base because the -30WSM helps a lot with trap laying speed, while the base dmg is irrelevant as we already mentioned earlier.

And here's the staffmods table :
01 ≤ iLvl ≤ 11: T1, T2 (base T1)
12 ≤ iLvl ≤ 18: T1, T2, T3 (base T2)
19 ≤ iLvl ≤ 24: T1, T2, T3, T4 (base T3)
25 ≤ iLvl ≤ 36: T2, T3, T4, T5 (base T4) (D2C: iLvl ≥ 25)
37 ≤ iLvl ≤ 99: T3, T4, T5, T6 (base T5) (D2X only)

Each base Tier is randomized by :
20% chance of +1
50% chance to stay unmodified
20% chance of -1
10% chance of -2

So not only these formulas give you a free chance of 2os (instead of wasting a larzuk quest), they also lower the ilvl at a range where you can now roll +blade sentinel, while it wouldn't normally be possible, and with higher chances to roll +blade fury and +fade.

Chance to roll fool mod : 1/88.86 (1.13%)
or half that since we want 2os
and this % includes the chance to roll a useful suffix, like ias, ctc amp, leech, etc
and also the chance to roll some of the most wanted staffmods

not bad for something you can easily SSF under a day.

Quote (SinsOfTheSun @ Aug 23 2025 05:54pm)

Well the above is simply explaining why a simple magic claw with only 1 affix, fool’s, and 2os from larzuk (Lo+Lo) is already outperforming a perfect eDeath.

Then ofc this simple claw can easily be upgraded to a rare, with mods such as :
2 sin
Innate 2os (instead of larzuk on a magic claw)
+staffmods
40ias (laying trap speed for sentinels)
5% ctc amp
Eth + self rep (although its very minimal)

The 3 prefixes : fools, 2sin, 2os are so good that if your claw even has 300ed its far from being as good, cuz you’re missing one of the above.