You don't seem to understand. Your ONLY attack is plague javelin.
And when all you're doing is throwing plague javelins (the rest of your attacks do nothing), your plagues are extraordinarily easy to dodge.

Unless your opponent has to get on top of you to hit you, like a smiter or wind druid, they can simply ignore your plagues. Its very easy to just teleport around plagues and shoot people while being safe- playing safely and teleporting slowly and cautiously.
Anyone in a pub will immediately start doing that, I've seen it loads.

But when you are throwing knockbacking GA and furies that deal high damage, people can't take their time and be patient- they have to overextend and *thats* what trips people into plague javas
All your zon has is plague javelin, making her easy to fight against. The more attacks a zon is throwing at someone, the less they can play against it singlemindedly. And thats what makes pure plague awful.



Last time I checked, I had 1-5600 charged strike with -20% enemy resists. And yes, that *does* do something, even against Tgods.
"Tankable", you don't get it at all, do you? My arrows could deal 5-20 damage and they would still put people into FHR and lock them up on 50% of hits due to knockback. Damage is mostly irrelevant on the bow- they just need to interrupt people and deal a small amount.
I don't think I've ever killed decent with arrows alone, and I don't try to. I use them to harass people and interrupt their teleports and attacks. People can't teleport through a multi field or a chain of guided arrows.
And "gm cta"? Who cares. Putting a cta in your inventory is GM too, and doesn't make your bow utterly awful like a cta bow is. You get a painfully slow attack with no damage, compare that to faith.



The point behind LF isn't to kill someone in one hit. When you are spamming it on a BvC who is trying to teleport, as you're sidestepping as he tries to triwhirl, and locking him up, the damage adds up extremely fast. Getting hit by 1 lightning fury isn't going to kill anyone.
But 30k-40k lightning damage and 15,000 physical from 10 hits due to a knockback chain, will kill people.
I'd say LF makes up about 40% of my damage output, with 40% plague and 20% across cs/bow. With a 6/40 java and level 1 fury, you'd be interrupting people while dealing no damage- just stalling yourself, not actually advancing your win.
What you gain for that sacrifices isn't even close to worth it. +2 plague javelin in exchange for losing all your physical damage?

I'm not sure if you've ever heard of this concept called "marginal utility", but thats how this build was designed. You get more advantage from all the physical damage on a godly rare java or eth titans, then you get from the minor level bonus on a +6 java, by a mile.
You get more advantage from 4 inventory slots as CTA cube and a faith bow then you get from a CTA bow, by a mile.
You get more advantage from 20 CS and its synergies than you get from measly points into D/A/E. You are comparing 10% dodge against a 5600 damage CS and extra 3k on fury. Is CS utterly godly? No. But its worth a hell of a lot more than extra dodges



I'd love to explain to you all the mechanics of d2, but why don't we keep it at this:
Any time someone blocks* or is put into faster hit recovery (FHR), it interrupts their attack/cast animation. (*besides 10 frame free block window)
All you have to do is piddle someone with guided arrows and it will interrupt the majority of their casts.


I've never had a barb live with 1 hp from my plague javelin, because I'm roasting them with furies, garrows and CS while the poison drains them.
I'm guessing your zon just teleports away as fast as she can and waits until they're dead, right?



Have you ever actually dueled a BvC? Thats how zons beat them. When you knockback a barbarian who was teleporting on top of you, it interrupts their teleport, but their whirlwind still goes through.
If that teleport of theirs was namedlocked, they are now in a namelocked ww.

Its not their "choice". Its what happens when you interrupt their cast (well, when I interrupt their cast- your zon can't interrupt anything in any way shape or form).
The barbarian was playing perfectly well, making no mistakes, but suddenly hes either namelock whirling, or whirling a very long distance in a straight line- because I interrupted his teleport.

Interrupting a barbarians teles are easy. They will be leaping nearby you, or you can see them coming on your minimap. All you have to do is throw furies in their directions at short range, garrows when they're 2+ screens away.
A barbarian can't teleport any further then his own screen sans throwlock or C/T. He has to get close to you to teleport on top of you. And you should be throwing furies in his direction as he tries to close that gap
And all it takes is a single hit to blast him out of sync and into a chain of throws- then he has to run perpendicular to you just to land on you.

And once a BvC is on top of you, you still tank as though you had 96,000 HP with no block or dodge or %dr. So all you have to do is sidestep him while throwing lightning furies
And guess what happens *then*? Thats right- the barbarian is forced to run away, or try to teleport- and if tries to teleport, you'll probably knock him out of it with a fury.
And thats how barbs can lose hard. All you have to do is walk perpendicular to one whirlwind and hes no longer in a position to keep whirling.



And the same, is of course, exactly true of chargers.
Charge has a 1/8 chance to hit you due to block/dodge. Probably 1/9 to 1/10 after attack rating is counted
Meanwhile, a lightning fury has a 3/4 chance to hit a charging paladin. And once that paladin reaches you and whiffs, that fury knockbacks him.

I really doubt you've ever actually played a javazon, because anyone who has should know exactly what this is like- you walk 1 step away, throw a fury, walk 1 step away, throw a fury, etc, etc
The pally can never, ever, ever hit you with smite. All he can do is take his luck at charging- and meanwhile the furies will bounce him backwards and screw up his charges, and the plague will eat him in seconds.




But again, you actually have no idea what I'm talking about. Why? Because your zon has no knockback.
Hell, not just that, but your zon has absolutely no way to put anyone into hit recovery animation
Poison doesn't do FHR. Your bow damage isn't high enough to shave off 1/8 of someone's HP in a single hit.
You have no points into light skills and no physical damage on your javelin.

That means you have literally no way to interrupt the casting of blockless characters, and can't chainstun anyone period (no blocklock in 1.10+ due to 10 frame delay)
All your zon can do is hit someone with poison and then either teleport away l8z style, or sit there and wait until one of you dies.


Thats the dead opposite of what a Damach Zon does. I don't l8z, never have, never will.
When I poison a BvC, its just putting a clock over his head as we duke it out next to each other with whirlwind vs fury+cs+garrow.
Theres no running away, no blind tanking while watching my wristwatch and counting the seconds on plague. Never.
I'm spamming attacks nonstop. If a BvC runs from me, I chase him down, teleport right on top of him and stab away with chainlock CS.








This whole wall of text was pointless. You don't even understand basic mechanics. I'm wasting my time. Its like trying to teach fastnec bomboklatze to someone who asks "whats a server" or teach a ghost assassin to someone who plays Runequest PvP

speaking of which, I still need to write that fastnec bomboklatze guide don't I?
was lag ofc

I'm going to repost this on each new page:



too many people still refer to the original post =/

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jun 19 2011 11:56pm

can i duel you sometime later this week HLD VS HLD ? ill use bvc, bone necro, ele druid, bliz sorc, fb sorc, trapper, ww sin, 2nd trapper, bow zon, and plague zon.

after i duel your amazon with each of those, and win every ft 5 ( willing to bet 5-0 btw . . .)

you will see that even though you distribute your skills as such, cry that this knockback works so well, and that your lf does such massive dmg ( 40 % of ur total dmg dealing LOL ! ), your zon is just awful, a poor build, lacks essentials, and is just outmatched by anyone with half a brain or a good character...


referring to your arguments, i can only guess you're dueling the absolute bottom of the barrel duelers on useast.


pm me, lets set up a date when i dont work

cry about it some more.
If you've run out of arguments, tears will suffice.

simple explanations do not seem to work since you're so narrow minded...you believe things work so much better because maybe you've only dueled idiots? i will show you otherwise...that what you believe to work well, doesnt.

You seem to have some delusion that you're either worth my time or on the same server on me. Wrong on both counts.
Crushing noobs like you is just plain boring


Like you know that scene in cool hand luke, where he gets in a fist fight and keeps getting up? I'm the bored bruiser walking away. And you're sure as hell not paul newman- you're just some worthless scrub nobody cares about

its so silly though, making a pure plague java with no kb or other real attacks.

Imagine the situation where your opponent stacks PLR/PR with cleansing and reduces your 140k plague javelin to 60 HP lost over like 5 seconds.
Or where he just buys a bunch of antidotes and laughs.
What can you do? Jab him to death with your 100 damage jab? Slowly prickle him with a CTA bow when he could reach out and smash you with 1 hit?
Its putting all your eggs into a single basket- poison damage- and once that baskets burnt, you have nothing left. Powerless, useless. Like a fireball sorc against hotspurs-dwarfs-risingsun

But its not those BM situations that matter. Its the GM factor that kills it:
You're putting all your eggs into one easily avoided basket

If your only real attack is plague javelin, then you're incredibly easy to avoid. Hell I could walk around on a naked barbarian and never die to that shit. Like I said, what can you do besides (lol) telestomp them with plague?
Unless they are braindead retards who move directly at you, or melee ranged characters/casters that have to (who probably kill you long before plague kills them), well then they can just sit outside your clouds and pelt you.


Pure plague zons suck ass. They suck it with a straw through the sphincter.

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jun 20 2011 12:21am

poison javelin, hi, i said poison javelin many times. i can throw multiple ones at a time, it's easier to hit with/harder to dodge, it's effective vs plr (every paladin via cleans, sin via fade, plus whoever has plr items), afterwards can go for plague (unless it's just vs a char where plague is easy to hit with to start with, or there's an opportunity to catch a telestomp in plague)



they should still have 75 res... before their death it doesn't even counter anya stack, but most people do have 20 extra res... 0-933 after pvp penalty, 0-233 with 75, 0-140 with 85, potentially much less with sorb and/or mdr

if bow damage is irrelevant mostly, why not go 7 fpa? and i have a faith anyway, so it's a needless comparison, buffing cta from inv is not considered gm in lots of places, but it doesn't matter because i do this too at times if i want to buff this way



who are you hitting with 10 lf's before they can get away? o_O

the 6/40 jav is for ias mostly, not really the skills, but ofc they help



you interrupt the majority of your opponent's casts with 8 fpa ga? sounds like they're playing smartly... same with hitting them 10 times in a row, that's silly -- this doesn't even happen with 7 fpa ga unless they're tele'ing stupidly/predictably, much less with your 10fpa jav throw (55 ias i count)



cool getting in ww lock isn't a mistake... perhaps stop on the teleww you're about to do when you're going to get fhr'd...

and they should not be leaping near you...



he should tele twice in succession... maybe you catch him with a lf on after the first tele, in which case he gets away qiuckly (he's still a screen away, so you're really not going to get many hits in a best case scenario)

if he fails to get to you in the two teles, he shouldn't run sideways and still try to get to you, he should go out and repeat from a different direction



he's making entirely too long ww's if you can sidestep and throw multiple lfs at him at 10fpa before he's out



charge/smite is idiotic, he should telesmite if he's smiting at all. sure, that's what the typical bad pub charge/smiters do, but it makes no sense for him to do that vs you... if he misses a charge, he can vig charge away without getting hit by more than 1 lf... all of these should get in and get out quickly if they miss, and that's not as hard as you're making it sound



why would he run away... other than to tele out / tele back in, he really shouldnt... and he's going to be able to do that because barb fcr bps are quick -- and he should have either 40 or 62 fcr bp to get out rather quickly (3-4 frames faster than 70 fcr zon anyway) -- he absolutely can get away from you if he wants to

there's no mechanic i haven't understood, my claim is that it doesn't work... i have used kb before on this char, and i used your skill build 3-4 years ago for that matter, i think your build is less effective than both mine and a less poison based hybrid

didn't intend to be hostile, but you seem a bit touchy, calm down my friend

i don't really bm duel, other than pubs, so if they're drinking antidotes, i don't really duel... and i contend you can't do much of anything against that either, as your backups are rather small without being coupled with poison/plague javs...

despite diglett's general jackassery, i think his point is that he can show that quite a bit of your arguments for strategies don't pan out vs a good dueler, which he seems to think he is (and i agree)... i mean if you're interested in earning some easy fg, as you seem to expect goom, i'll pay his bet if you beat him ft5

Interesting! Started making a Poison/Fury/CS/GA-zon last week, and just found this guide. I'm doing a pretty similar build and only missing a few pieces (not counting the upgrades I'll make later ofc). Nice guide, and well motivated responses to the questions.

And the guys who rely only on poison dmg, you really restrict yourselves to a skill that is easy to avoid and slow at killing. The difference between having a 100+k poison attack or a 80:ish k poison attack PLUS decent secondary attacks of entirely different types is huge. With the hybrid build you can dish out some serious dmg while waiting for the poison to do its thing. You also force the opponent to get more aggressive, since he can't just stand outside the plague field without any danger. If he does that, say hello to arrows and fury that actually hurts. Unlike most poison based builds, this is not a passive one. It's a build that puts alot of pressure on the opponent, forcing him to act swiftly.

The main thiing I'm debating is which helmet to use. I see you recommend Griffon's, but I had originally planned on using a 2-20-2 circlet (preferably with adds if I can find one). I read the post you linked to explaining the 75 fcr breakpoint, but is the slightly faster teleport worth it? Sure, the light skills get a bit more powerful but having another socket might be better in some cases.