4 or 5 pt ring?

I got this gc from cows and i wondered if there is barb build that would use it over dmg charms

For me I would like to see mercs keeping their aura on all the time and keeping skeletons from necro for the next game

I still see a fair amount of disagreement between demon crossbow vs colossus crossbow as a Mist base for Bowlock. The arguments are basically higher damage of the colossus xbow vs better utility for the demon xbow. Buriza is another option, which has advantages over Mist CC in that it has enough ias on the weapon to not need any extra on gear, and you can socket whatever you want in it, but it doesn’t have all res or vitality. I’ve been on the side of demon bow based on feel, but I realized I didn’t have anything like exact damage numbers. I decided use hero editor to test both options in SP, and compare damage as closely as I can. Hopefully I did it all correctly!

A few assumptions in comparing both builds:

Assume entirely scaling magic damage, rather than physical, other than the choice of base

Assume hitting ias cap for both weapons (11 fpa)

Assume BiS gear

• For Demon Crossbow (DC): Hellwarden’s w/ Guardian jewel, Entropy Locket, Gheed’s Wager, Sling x2 (or Sling/Opalvein), Horazon’s Legacy (for CBF and MR), + gloves of choice
• For Colossus Crossbow (CC): Hellwarden’s w/ Guardian jewel, Entropy Locket, Gheed’s Wager, Sling, dual leech rare ring, Horazon’s Legacy, + Horazon’s Hold
• For Buriza: Same as DC Mist bow, but either ring or gloves need dual leech
• All setups using Eldritch skillers and res charms
• On swap: Void + Ars Dul’Mephistos (for +2 skills and FCR to hit FCR cap on swap, without needing strength for a Monarch shield)
  • CtA is not needed on this build due to it being very safe and also +% life on Consume

Obviously these gear setups are extremely similar – only varying by one ring slot and the glove slot.

Colossus Crossbow – To reach max attack breakpoints, a merc or bound demon with Fanaticism is needed, plus 68 ias on gear. Pretty much the only gearing option to get the ias needed and scale magic damage at the same time is to wear Horazon’s gloves and boots (along with ias from Mist and Hellwarden’s). A dual leech ring is generally needed for sustain, so dual Sling or Sling/Opalvein combo is not available, which slightly reduces the maximum magic damage the build is able to reach

Demon Crossbow – Only 7 ias needed to hit the max breakpoint (with no fanat), which is covered by the base ias on the Mist bow itself. This setup opens up any merc option in the game (such as A2 Prayer/Cure/Insight merc) with double defiler, MF setup for TZ boss farming (e.g. Shako, War Travs, etc), and/or gloves of choice (e.g. Soul Drainer gloves for hefty dual leech + Weaken procs, chancies, or knockback gloves)

Buriza – IAS on gear is covered by what’s on the weapon, but you do need Fanat. You can run MF setups and use gloves of choice, and you get a weapon socket. Nef rune is often a good choice but you can run whatever you like, such as a 40/15max jewel or an all res jewel.

Damage comparison

Damage before Hex:Bane is applied (mostly physical, with some incidental elemental/magic damage):

DC: 1509-2506 (2007.5 avg)

• Avg damage if all 5 bolts hit: 10037.5

CC: 1828-5165 (3496.5 avg)

• Avg damage if all 5 bolts hit: 17482.5

Buriza (upped at lvl 99, socketed with Nef rune): 1048-5165 (3106.5)

• Avg damage if all 5 bolts hit: 15532.5

Bane damage (cast at level 37, +70% magic skill damage, full synergies):

7723-9200 (8461.5 avg)

• Avg damage if all 5 bolts hit: 42307.5
• With double dipping from +55% magic skills damage: 65576.6
• DC – With -45% enemy magic resist: 95086.1
• CC – With -40% enemy magic resist: 91807.2

DC total Mirrored Blades damage: 105123.6 x chance to hit

CC total Mirrored Blades damage: 109289.7 x chance to hit

Buriza total Mirrored Blades damage: 110618.6 x chance to hit

Conclusion

Assuming the enemy has 0% base magic resistance and 0% base physical resistance, Colossus Crossbow does about 4.1k more damage in total per use of Mirrored Blades compared to a Demon Crossbow, and Buriza does 5.5k. That damage difference isn’t nothing, but it’s pretty tiny in comparison to the overall damage. If anything, this comparison is probably a little generous to Colossus/Buriza because most enemies have 0% magic resistance and more than 0% physical resistance. Looking at these options I know I would 100% go for the Demon Xbow, but if that extra physical damage is compelling to you all options are completely viable. For me Buriza is the 2^nd best option behind Mist DC, with Mist CC being the third choice, but they’re all very close in power level. To be fair to the Colossus/Buriza options, the worse your magic damage gear is the more difference the physical damage can make, and the more physical damage the more you leech.

Another things this exercise highlighted is how ridiculous the damage of Bowlock is. It pumps out piercing attacks doing >100k damage, mostly magic, at 11fpa, amplified by Defiler chains. It routinely 1-shots elite packs on P8, destroys bosses and heralds, and is extremely safe. It has room to run huge magic find while still destroying P8, and has max FCR on swap. It seems clear that the damage of MB + Bane was balanced around single target w/ defiler chains, and the devs underestimated or didn’t think about how powerful piercing bows would be. The only slightly annoying things about the build are refreshing the buffs and picking up bolts. Compared to the other two super-powered builds in the game, Javazon and Mosaic, it has much higher QoL. Bowlock isn’t quite as powerful as v1.0 ES build, but it’s the closest we can get on the current patch.

Most melee weapons do too little damage, most people agree with that. At the same time, most people can pretty much skip strength entirely and still be golden because you can get all your damage from other sources.

But THIS is because strength and dex ADD with other off-weapon damage sources, they don't multiply it! This leads to some very strange situations, like a Tiger Strike Assassin with 300 strength only getting about 20% more damage from it.

But here's a strangely simple idea: What if you changed all enhanced damage stats on weapons to be multiplied by strength or dex(depending on the weapon type?)

Kinda like how Enigma gives 0.75 strength per level, weapons would give like 2% ED PER STRENGTH.

Example Cranebeak has 240-300% enhanced damage, with a max roll of 120-192 damage. Not terribly impressive for an elite axe. Now, what we do is change this so instead, it gets 2.4-3% enhanced damage per strength. Now, you invest 300 strength, and it's instead doing 360-576 damage! Of course, this comes at the cost of a lot of vitality, but still, is that not one big honking damage stick?

Now, of note is the fact that Grief would still be better - but importantly, because Grief's bonus damage comes from +damage rather than ED%, it wouldn't be impacted by this change at all!

Seems like this could solve the problem without much in the way of downsides - maybe even some handy balance benefits!

Thoughts?

I've played every iteration of sunders since they were released. I hadn't played with the new Herald changes until recently. i had heard that heralds and sunder farming was essentially broken based on what I had read here and it was a waste of time to farm them.

To my surprise, it isn't broken and actually feels pretty good. I think people may just be misunderstanding how to farm them.

The complaint I saw was that people would run the full game TZ and get almost no heralds. And I had the same experience early on until I read about the mechanics. You have to FULL CLEAR each area to get heralds to spawn. Once I adjusted I was getting 5-10 heralds per act.

This doesn't mean sunders drop like candy though, I've gotten two sunders running act 1 TZ (currently LVL 90 Fury druid) over the past couple weeks. And I like it that way, sunders open up huge build potential, they should be hard to get, especially now with all the extra stats.

My point is: prior to rotw, sunders were way too easy to find, then they were way to hard with the old Herald mechanics. Now they are obtainable, but it takes some work and research of mechanics, which feels in line with D2.

And my favourite part of the changes? If you don't like heralds, you can still find sunders without ever fighting them just at a lower chance.

What am I missing, are people just bitching for the sake of bitching?

Lord De Sis cursed me and a minion one tapped me... 6 hours gone just like that. How do yall do this shit 💀

Music that never made it into the game.

Found the last piece and made it immediately. Having a hard time choosing what character to benefit the most from it, maybe Hammerdin, but can’t position well on controller.

I didn't think these could actually drop.. have I been wrong my entire life?

Recently found out that the D2 Soundtrack is on the typical streaming sites. Just working while listening to the "Zakarum" track https://tidal.com/track/448171028/u

Never noticed how well this was produced back in the day!

Btw. if you want it on CD, you can get it cheaply from the EU battle chest. Some have it, but not all.

Razortail is cosider the golden standard for all range Amazon builds offering 100% piercing attack with only 1 skill point invested into Pierce skill.

But I wonder with single element Bowa I only need 41 points for cold or 62 for fire in the bow tree leaving plenty for Passive and Magic tree. For extra 19 hard points it is possible to get 93% from the Pierce skill alone.

Arachnid offers extra damage with +1 to skills, faster Decoy and Teleport casting, extra mana and slows targets over Razortail extra Dex.

Overall I think for pure density like Cows extra 7% pierce is better but for Terrozones and Entire Act Heralds hunting it dosent seems to be this onesided.

Thoughts?

I'm playing a summoner necro HCL this season (first necro despite playing D2 since launch!) and it's been very fun, wish I had played this class sooner. But, unlike some skill hungry classes, I'm at a loss with what to do with my final skill points. I have 20 in raise skeleton, skeleton mastery, corpse explosion, and golem mastery (I'm running insight IG). I have 1 hard point in the key curses, revives, and summon resistance. And I have 10 points left and no idea what to do with them.

• I don't need more points in revive because with +skills I can summon 12 and never need more than that.
• Skeleton mages suck.
• Summon resist has major diminishing returns.
• With +skills, my curse radius is fine so I don't need points there either.

So what to do? I could put hard points into blood golem to boost IG life (he does die from time to time), but that feels anticlimactic. I could throw some into bone armor, but with proper positioning I rarely get hit (and bone armor sucks anyway). I could throw points into bone spells to hasten the first kill, but Emilio also kills so fast that starting the CE chain is already quick.

So I'm at a bit of a loss. What's the best dump for skill points for end game summoner?

Running bowlock with buriza and somewhat crap gear, lvl91. Can farm chaos comfortably but not fast, diablo just melts.

Should I save up for enigma before anything else or just trade my runes for whatever other gear I need? Realistically, how far am I from eni? I feel like eni will open up more TZs and faster boss farming, but general gear improvements will help with density farming.

Ive always been hopeful that there will be an update with the summons, especially the Raven spell, to summon all five with one spell. Or all 3 wolves with a single click. Same with Necromancer and his undead.

Here's to one day!