so i just learned something about deadly strike and head striker gives over 100% deadly strike at higher levels meaning every hit will roll deadly strike. Skills that convert Physical damage to a different type (magic, fire and cold arrow, Lightning Bolt, Fists of Fire, Berserk) do so after DS or CS are applied, so converted damage is doubled. what does this mean for aura damage, its not a skill that converts your physical damage to elemental but it does add elemental damage to your physical, am i right in thinking that this sword would ensure your melee attacks that are buffed from auras like holy chock/freeze/fire will always deal double the damage ? if this is the case why have i never seen something like a melee sorc doing 40k-70k melee damage from light auras and enchant use this weapon ? all it would take is 1 hit and you over 80k-140k damage and its not hard to get that ar up i mean you could rock with this weapon on anything that deals elemental damage like even a druid using fire claws or rabies ? or an assassin using envenom what if the assassin had level 50 envenom and all that poison damage is being delt over what like 1 second or something crazy because the poison time on that skill is super short ? is this weapon just a forgotten machine of death because no one understands its true potential anymore ?

i just noticed that widomaker also has that deadly strike mod and it already makes the damage you deal magic it fires magical arrows i think auradin with this melee weapon and bow on swap is good ?

It does not work. Only damage that has been converted to elemental etc. from physical would be doubled by your attack. Auras like holy shock do not convert any damage. They add a raw amount (eg. +1000 lightning damage) onto the physical portion of the attack.

Headstriker is a nice weapon but it's far from the best. There are many places where you can get a substantial amount of deadly strike (gore riders, highlords etc.) which most melee classes are already using which would diminish its effectiveness. Also, the way to maximise your damage is to increase the value of multiple scalars.

For instance, let's say you have a headstriker that hits for 112 damage average, 100% DS and the rest of your gear gives you a 3x damage scalar. Your total damage weighting on a hit would be 112 x 2 x 3 = 672.
Now, imagine we replace the headstiriker with a grief, we would have around 410 average damage, perhaps 60% DS and a 2.5x damage scalar from gear. Total damage weighting would be 410 x 1.5 x 2.5 = 1640

So you can see that the other problem with headstriker is that the base weapon damage scalar is too weak which leads to lower damage output.

Hope this helps!

the only thing headstriker is good at is for act 5 mercs where 1 handed weapons get 2x the base damage and 3x min/max damage

alright so what about that widomaker bow, it allows the use of guided arrow and it fires magical arrows, is that changing your physical damage to magical ?

don't listen to troll it works.
that's why every character use head striker, widowmaker or a combination of both.

so if you roll ds while using a grief like you said in your example above if you had amp damage curse on your target would it double the damage again ? i mean i know it wont "double" the damage you are out putting, but it will cause them to take double the damage after ds activates right ?

This post was edited by Alphonsus123 on Jul 16 2018 08:09am

I think you're misunderstanding the mechanic.

1. Let's say you are a barbarian and you're using berserk with 100% deadly strike. The skill converts your physical damage into magical damage. So if you normally hit for 100 physical damage, the game will check if whether or not you perform a deadly strike. The physical damage is doubled, then converted into magical damage. So the final output is 200 magical damage.
2. Second situation: you're a paladin with holy shock active and 100% deadly strike. If you normally hit for 100 physical damage, the game checks for a deadly strike and doubles your damage to 200 physical damage. Then the aura adds an additional 200 lightning damage let's say. So your final output is 200 physical damage and 200 lightning damage.
3. Headstriker's deadly strike percentage only works for attacks made by the Headstriker itself. If a barbarian who is dual wielding a grief and a headstriker attacked once with each weapon, only the headstriker will crit, the grief will only have a 20% chance.
4. If you're target starts with 0% physical resistance and it has amp damage on it, and you hit it with a headstriker, it will take 4x damage.

Not questioning this, but where did you find that info?

Upping the Headstriker would make it real more damage. Having it being ethereal would too. I've seen overpay threads paying hundreds of fg for eth Headstriker before.

https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=75547107&f=21
https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/index.php/Barbarian_(mercenary) (wiki is inaccurate afaik, the min/max damage should be tripled not doubled)
also one of the sites that you can't link to on jsp;