- Jul 8, 2004
- 3,398
- 347
- 83
Stats - Strafe half / Plague Javelin half
Skills
20 Strafe
20 Plague Javelin
20 Poison Javelin
19 Valkyrie
1 in the rest of the P&M tree
Gear
The Planning Stage
Every so often, I get tired of bashing monsters in melee...and that’s means it’s time to step back from the fray and build a weird archer. I always like building around CTC skills and I happened upon Pus Spitter, the oddly necromantic crossbow and the only item in the game that let’s you CTC Lower Resist on striking.
How was I going to get Lower Resist to go off? I needed to hit monsters quickly to maximize my chances of the curse going off. Multishot’s speed and massive spread of missiles would have been ideal...but only the middle 2 arrows have a chance of triggering the curse. That left Strafe as the best candidate for curse delivery.
So what benefits from Lower Resist? Elemental damage. How do I do elemental damage as a zon? The lightning javelins, the fire/cold arrows, and the poison javelins. I ruled out LF since it inevitably ends up overshadowing any skill it’s paired with. I already built a number of characters utilizing the fire/cold arrows - so those were out. That left Plague Javelin, a skill I had never used before and one that thematically fit nicely with Pus Spitter.
Having never used Plague Javelin before, I did a little digging and found a great guide (with an eye-searing
green background!) about poison damage and the mechanics of the poison javelins. A couple important points:
I ended up naming my new zon Chimaera after a venomous species of fish and the fact that their namesake, the mythical Chimera, is often used to describe “an organism composed of two or more genetically distinct tissues, as an organism that is partly male and partly female, or an artificially produced individual having tissues of several species.“
Leveling and Observations
In order to boost my PJ damage, I packed a ton of +skills on this character - much more then I usually equip on a non-caster - and I enjoyed the benefit of all my one point wonders getting pumped up to lvl 12. Critical Strike went from a 16% chance to a 59% chance. Penetrate went from +35% AR to +145% AR. Pierce went from a 23% chance to a 75% chance. You get the picture. It was an unusual luxury.
My hybrid nature helped me and hurt me during the leveling process:
Code:
Lvl 82
Strafe damage: 712-2112 (with Might and Enchant)
Plague Javelin damage: 37K-38K
4 fpa Strafe
Life: 1126
Resists: -41, -11, 55, -41
Str: 35 | Dex: 245 | Vit: 205Skills
20 Strafe
20 Plague Javelin
20 Poison Javelin
19 Valkyrie
1 in the rest of the P&M tree
Gear
Code:
Harlequin Crest
Mara's
Up'ed Pus Spitter 'shael'*
'Enigma' Breast Plate
Trang Oul's Claws
Nosferatu's Coil
War Traveler
Corruption Whorl rare ring*
Beta BKWB
Switch: Titan's Revenge / Lidless Wall
Pus Spitter
Gorgon Crossbow
Two Hand Damage: 79 - 276
Durability: 38 of 40
Required Level: 57
Required Strength: 47
Required Dexterity: 42
Fingerprint: 0xc4f5dcfc
Item Level: 75
Version: Expansion 1.10+
9% Chance to cast level 6 Poison Nova when struck
4% Chance to cast level 1 Lower Resist on striking
+2 to Necromancer Skill Levels
+30% Increased Attack Speed
218% Enhanced Damage
+410 to Attack Rating (Based on Character Level)
Adds 150 Poison Damage Over 8 Secs (200 Frames)
Required Level +7
Requirements -60%
1 Sockets (1 used)
Socketed: Shael Rune
Corruption Whorl
Ring
Required Level: 65
Fingerprint: 0x147b1f7
Item Level: 84
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+5 to Minimum Damage
+115 to Attack Rating
5% Mana stolen per hit
8% Life stolen per hit
+43 to Mana
Lightning Resist +20%The Planning Stage
Every so often, I get tired of bashing monsters in melee...and that’s means it’s time to step back from the fray and build a weird archer. I always like building around CTC skills and I happened upon Pus Spitter, the oddly necromantic crossbow and the only item in the game that let’s you CTC Lower Resist on striking.
How was I going to get Lower Resist to go off? I needed to hit monsters quickly to maximize my chances of the curse going off. Multishot’s speed and massive spread of missiles would have been ideal...but only the middle 2 arrows have a chance of triggering the curse. That left Strafe as the best candidate for curse delivery.
So what benefits from Lower Resist? Elemental damage. How do I do elemental damage as a zon? The lightning javelins, the fire/cold arrows, and the poison javelins. I ruled out LF since it inevitably ends up overshadowing any skill it’s paired with. I already built a number of characters utilizing the fire/cold arrows - so those were out. That left Plague Javelin, a skill I had never used before and one that thematically fit nicely with Pus Spitter.
Having never used Plague Javelin before, I did a little digging and found a great guide (with an eye-searing
green background!) about poison damage and the mechanics of the poison javelins. A couple important points:- PJ’s poison clouds do not stack. In the case of overlapping poison clouds, only the highest damage cloud will take effect. Kind of a bummer and it leads to the second point...
- Pierce is not that useful and not worth pumping or equipping items to boost it. Sure, you end up covering more of the screen with successful pierces, but in my experience, you’ll almost always get a nice tight group around your tanks that one PJ easily covers.
- Finally, Lower Resist only improves poison damage if the monsters are cursed BEFORE they get hit with your PJ. This places a premium on cursing monsters as fast as possible so you can maximize your poison damage.
I ended up naming my new zon Chimaera after a venomous species of fish and the fact that their namesake, the mythical Chimera, is often used to describe “an organism composed of two or more genetically distinct tissues, as an organism that is partly male and partly female, or an artificially produced individual having tissues of several species.“
Leveling and Observations
In order to boost my PJ damage, I packed a ton of +skills on this character - much more then I usually equip on a non-caster - and I enjoyed the benefit of all my one point wonders getting pumped up to lvl 12. Critical Strike went from a 16% chance to a 59% chance. Penetrate went from +35% AR to +145% AR. Pierce went from a 23% chance to a 75% chance. You get the picture. It was an unusual luxury.
My hybrid nature helped me and hurt me during the leveling process:
- Strafe and Plague Javelin worked nicely together. Strafe excelled at picking off scattered groups and lone, high hp bosses while Plague Javelin crushed tightly-packed groups and preventing non-poison immunes from regenerating any health.
- Lower resist definitely did boost my PJ damage, but...not quite as much as I had hoped. Even without the benefit of the curse, PJ demolished non-poison immunes pretty quickly.
- Pus Spitter is obviously not an ideal strafing weapon, but I found my damage was decent all the way up to till Hell A5 - when I found my damage starting to run out of steam.
- My Valkyrie was not as unkillable as I was used too, in fact, she was pretty damn killable for most of my journey. You see, I almost always max Decoy when I max Valkyrie, and without that 20 point synergy, I was losing out on +400% life and 40% resist all.
- Due to all the specialized gear I was wearing, I have HORRIBLE resists. However, I actually didn’t die as much as I thought I would. The combination of Valkyrie, Decoy, my Merc, slow missiles, and just plain ol’ distance meant I could comfortably walk around with negative resistances without really suffering the consequences….until I started encountering gloams in Hell A5. Then I finally swapped in some light res charms to avoid seeing my charred body face down on the floor.
- Plague Javelin’s 4 second casting delay and Strafe’s locking you in place meant that each usage of each skill felt very important. If I missed with my javelin or mistimed my strafe, I hurt my chances of maximizing my damage or killing a particularly dangerous group of monsters.
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