Socketed on-weapon it's always considered off-weapon.
Always put IAS/DTD off-weapon

ah damn, thanks. was hoping for some hidden on-weapon boost. Currently need ias/fire res in the merc helm so can't slot this there.

Yeah; CoH should let you use it in the helm. Fort does require the jewel though.
Alternatively you can try to find a 3os Circlet of the Lamprey or something and jam 15IAS jewels in there. Works super well.

Can you ladder start this and still make good fg?

Or would it just be worth it to go sorc farm bosses then get a baba for trav

I usually start with the Barb because Find Item is broken and I hate Sorcs, but Sorcs are probably better.

For Ladder start merc on Tal Helm + Black Hades + Amn'd Arioc's or whatever. Lot of weapons that are fine honestly; you get picky as soon as you can with Eth Weaps though.

You can make good fg but sorc is probably better farming basic gear and flipping. This build is gear dependent, you'll kill pretty slow without a good merc weapon or grief.

Another factor is that part of why gf builds are popular is gambling rare circlets/rings/ammys for gg pvp items. Pvp isn't anywhere as big on ladder so the potential payout is going to be much less. On ladder I plan to run a less gf focused and more clear speed focused build to get HRs, items, charms, etc.

Yeah you can run a 30s/clear 45 Find Item Zerker for this. It's way more efficient.

I'm just starting to mess around with this build and grushed/power leveled a gf barb to lvl 87 so now I'm ready to actually optimize a bit.

Right now I'm just borrowing a lot of stuff from my GG javazon, so my merc is just messing around with a 10/30 eth andys with a 15ias/30fr jewel, perf eth forti, 300ed eth ca infinity, and I have a couple of questions:

1) The easiest swap seems to be ebotd / eth ariocs with amn or ed/ias jewel for the infinity, will I notice much of an overall gain there? Or should I just go buy an eth coh/eth ariocs or ebotd?

2) Out of curiosity, for the overall value this build provides, what % would estimate comes from the actual play/finding items, vs. what you eventually gamble?

Fun build, just learning it all, thanks!

This post was edited by Ateamer on Feb 2 2022 03:29pm

1) Infinity is okay, not great relative to BOTD and Arioc's from experience. But it can clear, just like other high end weapons, albeit much less quickly from experience.

2) Runes are a big %, so there's value in maximizing Find Item at all costs. The goal here was to get gold primarily, and reach for rares insofar as it's not too costly to gold/hour rate.

So what would you ballpark overall value %'s at, like 80% from normal play, 20% from gambling? Just curious.