What about a bowa ?
I'm not sure poison charms add up. Even with a single 451 poison charm, the bowa is strong. You can quickly clean the map, and at a long distance. Playing a bowa is less tedious than playing a hammer.
Plus, you walk with only 500 points of life, so you need constant vigilance.

The bowa is probably a little less efficient, but certainly much more fun.
On the other hand, the bowa is not effective everywhere: it is especially effective in the sanctuary of chaos or the throne of destruction.

http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=5088194

This post was edited by Chevaucheur on Jan 21 2018 08:49am

You could definitely do a fcr setup on mainhand like arachs/fcr rings, but just wearing 2x wizspikes or suicide branches on switch with a single 10% fcr ring means you reach the 105% breakpoint on switch, even if you're just 10% on main
And then since its pvm, there's not much penalty to teleporting with your swap weapons out and switching at seals.
considering the gear costs to get decent fcr on mainhand, I'm not sure how much that's worth the losses just for the occasional tele like when chasing de seis. Its definitely an upside, but is it worth losing DR from dungos and -1 raven/ber +1 cham/fcr ring?
an 8% dr setup with arachs/gillhat will definitely have more dps, but I think the CoA/dungos setup is a reasonable mix of survivability and damage. For a no-block char with 0 defense, even with 7000+ life, DR is pretty important, and it also affects your FHR thresholds, getting whacked by a doom knight might chain you to death if it interrupts a telepor, especially with amp, and howl isn't foolproof. If you want to do an 8% dr build, that works fine I guess, but going to high levels the DR build will have an edge just for not dying once in a while, and at the highest levels 97+ you basically have to go stormshield just in case you teleport on de seis's pack or whatnot. Heck, at 97+ I'd say the 2x ber coa, dungos and ber stormshield so you have 89% dr is best, you'll still be at -11% after amp.
By all means though, a gillhat setup can do more dps, and like you say works well with reapers merc for P8 diablo, but I'd be skeptical about taking a glass cannon build into higher levels

Act 2 merc is definitely a way to speed up that diablo kill, a ber reapers / guil setup would significantly speed up at players 8. And if you're using the beast offhand, you might be able to use a rattlecage for the merc for more CB, I'd have to look up the breakpoints for 30% ias + 9 fanat, compare that to 60% ias armor. But a lot of people swear by the lawbringer for de seis, and with good reason, it really does make it a lot less of a hassle. Having de seis keep decrepping you and running away is an issue, but knockbacking him interrupts him enough to make that less of a hassle. In the perfect scenario you kill de seis without any issue and a single run could go smoothly on camera, but over a number of games on average, when you have those benny hill music episodes of de seis doing laps around you, I think the act 3 merc might pay dividends.

its true that lightning enchanted bosses slow down the jav alot more than that video. If you get multiples in one game, it can make up that 20 second difference easily. Maybe it gives more reason to use rare javas or titans instead of tstrokes.
but there's also a question of how much experience the zon gets by wiping the entire pack incidentally. Even at level 97, its not like the minions/trash mobs are giving 0 experience, not to mention items. Its more practical for farming in generalized PvM of course, a zerk barb can't do anything but pop seals.

This is constructive for me too since I had to test out the various merc setups and never really thought about WSM applying to berserk, I only noticed it when decrep slowed me down when the ias calculator said it didn't.
Its also given me a lot of ways to speed up a javazon clear speed, TK fcr ring is good advice for waypoints, but I did testing and found that the spirit monarch build I used in that video is worse idea than just using cta/spirit on swap and tstrokes and 20/20 on mainhand. Like the barb, might as well teleport with swap out. If pre-boing didn't take longer I could swap it with a wizspike. I think wizspike uses the zons 1-hand-thrust block animations not her awful 1-hand-swing like suicide branch that would make it terrible for zipping past monsters

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jan 21 2018 08:57am

What’s your gear?

Pretty legit to me

that zon wasn't set up for pvm, it was this pvp build;
http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=48647218&f=87&p=388042905
but just using tokens to respec to pvm pure java / no d/a/e, and then swapping out for 3/20 gloves, sub out some skillers, and uh that was actually the only changes in that vid

A pure javazon is much better, the best chaos setup would probably be either a highlords 55% ias build or fcr amulet 35% ias build. The latter for example


there are plenty of variations to such a setup, probably better. You can sacrifice damage to go up to the next ias breakpoint like I said, subbing facets for ias jewels. Razortail is a solid option, not too crucial with already high % pierce but the last bit up to 100 makes a significant difference since it compounds on each target. Tstrokes, 6/40 javas, eth titans, non-eth titans and rare javelins all have good builds around them. Tstrokes do the most damage, 6/40's can hit better breakpoints, eth titans do good physical damage but can't repair between runs, non-eth titans have high stack count and can be repaired, if you had rares that beat titans you shouldn't waste them in pvm and they'd cost 1,000,000 fg anyway, but 4/40's are always an option.

For the chaos barb in the other video, the build (fixed) is:

This is a bit of a weird demonstration.
If you want XP, you’re much better off skipping De Seis/Diablo all together and just focusing on Infector/Vizier, killing all of their minions (they all give equal experience) and any uniques + minions in close proximity to the seals or on the path between the two. (In regards to 93-98, prior to this AT/Pits/Pindle are arguably better targets and at 98 Nihlathak is a better target.)
If you want loot, you’re much better off hitting AT or Pit at P1 and killing only the uniques/maximizing potential drops per minute (Mlvl 88 uniques @ AT/Pit can drop any item in the game, but even then it’s dependent on what items in particular you want.)

So the question itself (what’s the best PvM character) is extremely dependent on your intentions and your item availability.

IMO:
MFing untwinked? Blizzard Sorc @ P1 AT
MFing twinked? Berserk Barb with emphasis on Find Item @ P1 Pit
XP until 98? Blizzard Sorc @ 2 Seal CS
XP 98-99? Lightning Sorc @ P8 Nihlathak

I always liked the fact with barb you can do quick runs and take an extra few seconds a run popping unique mobs

hdin fastest overall but zerktele barb is fastest chaos clearer

Not my video but i feel like it should be in here with the barb/java comparison. Please notice he is not doing the far tele bug which could save him some additional time.



This post was edited by Uchiha on Jan 22 2018 07:58am