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.
edit: I'm an idiot. In any case, if anyone on escl manages to find a 4 os demon xbow, you have a buyer!