as seen above, your helmet has to much ias (if loh+highlord or cat)


let`s see
demon decrepefied is not such an easy thing to say since they all have physical resistances, don`t they

I doubt that you achive more damage with brand than with a wf yourself but let us leave that out right now and concentrate on the other things

let us assume we fight diablo on players 8, as you said you do that with this build

maximum ma speed= 3,5 attacks per second

diablo on players one has 113812

players 8= 350% more life=512154 hp
45% physres

one hit with cb would remoce14226 hp until his life would be the same as players 1
your merc can do 4 jabs per second (treachery+obedience+andyx or tal ias) his jab is 2 attacks--> 8 attacks per second at 40% cb


diablo has 45% physres and is a demon

so you have 6176 avdam/arrow
84% ds=1037568
16% w/o ds=98816
--->11363 avdam/strike
- diablo receives 11931 damage/arrow when dec works

11931*3,5=41758 dam/ second

if our merc only triggers 3 times cb in that second, he deals more damage than you do
not even considered off weapon ed and his own weapon damage

As the top of the guide says, I used brand to be different. Windforce may very well do more damage, I'd have to calculate it.

The damage calculations themselves took deadly/critical strike into consideration, so to get the average damage itself you would average out the minimum and maximum damages, not reapply deadly/critical strike.

I use strafe when killing Diablo because I have a good chance to hit Diablo (about 85%) and that 8.3 attacks a second is greater then 3.5. It also has a greater chance to proc Decrepify when I weaponswitch, its just a good idea to back away from Diablo as he casts his version of Bone Prison.

I never thought it was a good idea to have a melee mercenary in the Chaos Sanctuary, and I need the fanaticism from Faith to hit the breakpoint of 7 frame multishot / cold arrow / guided. You would definitely waste less time killing the rest of the Chaos Sanctuary with a 7 frame attack then to beef up an act 2 merc with Crushing Blow for the sole purpose of killing Diablo a little faster.

If you were to keep the 7 frame breakpoint, you would have to wield the Faith and in effect lose some deadly strike and Knockback, which is very useful for chaosing. You would also lose more damage when killing Diablo because you don't have so much enhanced damage to Demons, but you would do some more damage to everything else from the extra boost from Might. You gain an extra 130% ED or so, perhaps it all averages out as far as speed is concerned. Test it out yourself.

I'm aware the gear gives more IAS then is necessary from the breakpoint, but I have already defended my reasoning as to why I used the gear that I used.

Bump

Any more comments or questions?

sorry but ive seen a few chaos guides that use an a1 brand merc, and i have on occasion recommended it to people who wanted a zon for chaos

not all that different / original

and im fairly sure brand does around the same dmg as wf, if not more because 650%+ dmg to demons is a hell of a lot

I haven't seen many zons that use a lawbringer on weapon switch to cast decrepify. I also haven't seen a lot of zons in pubby games with Brand, most of them use Faith or Windforce. I'll agree that the idea of a chaos zon isn't new, or the idea that a zon could use Brand to do a ton of damage to demons, but I haven't read a guide in the stickies that suggests Brand (if you don't count the "Guide to your Bow Runewords" sticky, that includes all possible runewords for bows.)

jsp isnt the only place with guides(and dont ask me where ive read it because i use google and go on diff forums ect and dont remember all the places i look i just remember shit incase i want to make a char)

and lawbringer for chaos isnt new but the using it for the decrep, i havent seen thats around too much ill give you that

the guide is pretty good imo

there are a few things i would change though (you up for ideas?)

This post was edited by Blah58 on Aug 29 2008 02:11pm

knockback from brand does only work for middle 2 arrows at multiple shot so its kinda useless imo

Yes I am up for a few ideas, anything to improve the guide really. The only other websites I can remember offhand where I've read guides would be the amazon basin and the barons bazaar (I think the bazaar has all the calculation tables, can't remember atm).

Any better ideas are appreciated.

Edit: I have read a couple of SSoG's guides, his non-cookie cutter builds are weird

This post was edited by general_patton on Aug 29 2008 03:17pm

I know that only the two middle arrows are the only ones that carry knockback, life leech, curse procs ect. But it does have a use.

For massive area of effect damage in places where there's more than 20 monsters (cow level etc) skills like multishot, corpse explosion, chain lightning, blessed hammer, frozen orb, and lightning fury reign supreme. Multishot is very useful when you are being swarmed by monsters and you don't want to get strafe locked.