Is the Samurai Hybrid Caster still a viable build, or should I look at Melee?

if you mean a caster who does melee once out of mana
not really a good idea
if you mean a melee who uses a heal charm
great idea

I mean the build posted here:

http://forums.d2jsp.org/index.php?showtopic=22968921&f=74

it's fine in principle, pure int, melee till 30 or 40, then start casting
you don't really need a guide, just follow my sentence above

that works just fine mana pool is very limited though, but you should never die

That doesn't answer my question.


Cool, thanks.

I use a samurai hybrid, but i dont cast after lvl 30-40 cause i think even with all int melee is still better for long mcc.
I stop @ 60INT , 100dex, rest str. gear gives me like 100int, 100dex, 100str @ MQ lvl. really good tank, even w/o ee armor, the int and dex will lower your average hit to like 50

I played a melee/healer on my last samurai climb and it worked pretty well. Just get regular melee weapon and armour (I got EE daggers and EE plate mails) and then a charm with heal mastery and another nice add and then a sexy heal charm in the acc slot. Your mana pool sucks but with my sexy charms I was able to get MCC of 6 - 10 or more at level 55+. I did catacombs for most of the way up and it worked out pretty well, except that I ran out of mana a lot. And for that reason I'd suggest not using an attack charm but attacking with your weapon and then healing yourself.

What would a distribution be like for this?

put all points into INT until 50-60? DEX to 120-150? rest STR?


How is the Arena kill speed on such a build, lets say compared to a Mage with comparable gear (cost wise I suppose)


I'm asking cause I do read often that these Hybrid builds are quite good.