this.

working on it - need to find a brand / 4os demon xbow though lol

why are you both always denigrating people's original build?
seems like a nice build for pvm to me, but wont you need tons of ias to be effective?
Never mind, just read up some more ^^ didnt knew the xbow was -60 ias base

This post was edited by Sergeant01 on May 25 2010 10:58am

interesting concept, let's see

wasn't on striking before hitting or was that "on attack"?) (wasn't get struck also concentrated around the target of the strike itself and not the actor)
aka no need ar maybe (not to mention that there are also many other ways to stack on AR

2.
coh or fortitude on merc... not really good solutiuons, he is your cb dealer and bosskiller.. treachery all the way
wether gpa or gt or t is also debateable

coh on a merc is useless in the first place but let us skip that, ain't the fact that mercs don't have resistance/level....

3.
you only do 3 attacks/s and do not really have any crowdcontrol...
I guess you will really be looking forward to frenzytaurs and the likes (not to mention javelin cats, arachers and the likes)
not to mention neither ll nor lt

4. tgod is pretty stupid because the foh interrupts your attacks

5. no real physdam, no overstatted dex as far as I can see, thus only ~ 700%ed
a brand demon crossbow:
340% ed of 33avdam = 145 avdam of the weapon
700% off weapon ed =1160 dam/attack
with 80% ds ~ average of 2088 physdam/attack

let's take an average monster physres of 50%
so you will deal ~ 3k when they are AD'd or 1k when they are not

kewl

I always enjoy your posts since you always bring the facts to the tables.




Wrt ;
1) Brand -the mod is on striking, so you need to "connect/hit " to proc the spear. You'd want to connect anyhow for all that respectable phy damage, and deliver the cb, ow etc.

2) Treachery is almost always the best merc armor (given the price to make its a no brainer). I'm with you on this. The other two armors are solid however and keeping Coh on the merc allows you to steal it for a +2 on bearform, bo and the like. This was the reason I decided to use coh instead of treachery while I used fort on the nec.

3) Those are all valid concerns. I had one point in revive which ment I had a good number of skellies, the clay golem, the deadly merc, mages and a few vives in tough spots. (remember for hc play its wise to reshift after every few packs and this is a great time to vive a couple)

In addition to those things above which all help in the crowd control area, you have a very stout bone armor. I pretty much charged into everything like a bear going after a picnic basket. Durability was not lacking on this character.

4) Tgods , the belt of choice on hc, soul protection galore and and large hunk of str. Ive never found tgods to ever be a hinder with that ctc. For full disclosure I use phnx shield and occy on some chars and those are supposed to be the evil ctc's of doom. The really low % foh doesnt bug me or anyone I know that pvm's with it.
If you didnt use tgods, what would your suggestion be?
Call me Crazy but I was considering razortail for the dex and max damage. This would make ranger mode more effective in either those hard areas (dolls) or what used to be im spots.
I didnt find Dr to be terribly useful for this build because of the bone armor sorb. I can see it being used as a fail safe, something I found wasnt needed.

5)

Your numbers are accurate, though I recall my damage being a little bit higher, I utilized a handful of max damage charms to up my base damage a bit higher. Dont forget that your also going to get another ~648% damage to demons, a large % of the monsters in the game including all end bosses.

My damage iirc was ~4K phy avg with ds (add another 65-70 to max from charms) carrying 50% cb while at 8fpa. This is pretty fast, faster then the fastest conc or zerk barb.

Its the whole package of damage , the phy+ the magic damage , the extra pain for the merc with my amp (its always on if your playing). It works. It's not crazy but it'll kill pretty fast in a small game and if there is a massive pack of monsters, ce (or a specialized curse , is only a few clicks away with a quick deshift if your feeling impatient.


Other then that, I suggest you try it out, its funner then you'd think and more effective then you'd imagine.
Its a ctc BearNec its got win all over it



Thanks for your feedback





ps

An amazing place to mf on this build is the Maggot Layer (its level 85). The tight hallways allow the piercing spear to nail everthing down the line and by the time you kill the first monsters, most of the others are substantially weakened.



This post was edited by Master_Zappy on May 25 2010 11:23pm

Making this into a PvP character in a few weeks.

SHould be interesting.

Cool guide btw, nice to see some different builds!