The best in slot weapon for a bone necro for the entirety of D2 1.10 and later has been White. The magical number for FHR lock was 6k spear damage and was only obtainable with White or Marrowwalk glitch. With the recent changes to FHR, Oak charges being gm, and buffs to Bone Spear and Bone Spirit does Heart of the Oak become a stronger option for NvA than White?

What do u mean magical number for fhr lock

Fhr animation was based on the amount of life lost per hit

If an enemy loses more than 1/4 of his total life in 1 hit, he has a 75% chance to be put into fhr animation, if a character loses less than 1/4 of his total life in 1 hit he has a 37,5% chance to be put into fhr animation.

Spear life lost has always been rougly dmg / 6 so if you deal 6200 spear damage the enemy would lose max 1033 life per spear. Meaning the counter this whole thing you should aim for 4150+ life for nvn (or any duel really)

White will still be superior since this mechanic remains, it will still be the difference in killing a lot of enemies in 4 or 5 spears and the fhr animation will still be triggered, it just has a slight cooldown now, fhr is still important, just less important

As for the hoto thing, you’re better off using white + nature’s or wisp for oak = 8 spear still while hoto+Bk = 4 spear

This post was edited by Stefbef on May 6 2022 02:14am

I'm thinking of mostly fpk as you wanted over 6k spear damage to be able to trigger a Druid's fhr animation.

White will always remain superior in NvN. That's not even a debate.

In NvA it's a little disingenuous to just look at spear damage when comparing white+ring to hoto+bk as spirit and teeth become very important depending on the match up. When you look at dps between all 3 skills you're only losing like 5-6% of overall damage instead of 10-12% or whatever it would be just comparing spear damage. Hoto also gives max mana and rep life that become more advantageous the longer a duel takes.

As you mentioned, it's probably as simple as killing an opponent in 1 less spear is the only difference that matters. The quality of life stats from heart of the oak likely only matter when budget is considered.

This post was edited by Bad Town on May 6 2022 04:06am

yes agree druid without oak and necro life should be around the same, druid maybe bit more with sui (but also needed more fhr before)

i guess it somewhat depends on setup, hoto has some benefits to it, im just not entirely sure if the 20 repl etc is worth -4 spear

the thing is, hoto will always be good for a budget necro since they'll most likely struggle with resist when using white

i dont think hoto will ever be bad, however i do think on an insanely high budget necro white should always be superior

The biggest benefit for hoto in d2r is that you no longer wsg. Making the 40 resist hoto offers now no longer fake resist (meaning that you don’t lose it when you wsg)

Coupled with the added damage on bone spear/spirit From synergies changes in d2r, the extra 20 FCR hoto has over white, the 10 Dex (since block no longer affects anything regarding animations), and the 20 life rep, hoto is an extremely powerful option.

Especially when you consider that 20 FCR allows you to use bloodfist instead of Trang’s, giving you 40 life and 30 fhr. That 30 fhr is equivalent to 90 life (becuse you can use 9x 45s instead of 7x 45s + 2x 12fhr GCs along with dungos to hit 86 fhr). Meaning blood fist gives you up to 120 more base life. Which after self BO, is going to be around 211 life (assuming 71% life bonus from BO and 5% life bonus from jah in enigma).

Then your decision tree is:
211 life < more if barb Bo
40 resist < equivalent to 136 base mana From using 20:17 instead of 20/5
20 life rep
10 Dex
15% mana (hoto stat)
Or
5 spear
3 spirit



Without doing the new math on bone spear synergies damage with hoto, if you can still hit the hidden damage vs life fhr break points (which approach worthless now that fhr is near worthless), hoto is now likely better for vs all than white.

This post was edited by Bui6Pays40Percent4Wins on May 6 2022 04:30pm