Question about Grief PB

[Spensdawg]

Hi guys. Quick background: I just started playing again after many years, have made a fishymancer for MF and generating wealth and am following Hal's concentrate guide with a barb for a character type I thought I'd have a little more fun using.

Anyway I plan on making a grief runeword for my end game weapon, and was wondering what people thought about using a phase blade over a berserker axe, as grief's damage doesnt come from any ED and figured the IAS could be more useful than the zerkers superior damage.

Any thoughts people have about this or just using grief with a concentrator in general would be much appreciated.

[monkeon]

the pb is faster (-30) than the ba (0) (which means you dont have to equip ias items so much) and is inherently indestuctable so it has no repair costs. BOTD comes with indestructable and 60ias, so both these become less useful in a botd pb, but for grief they're still nice. since grief adds a lot of dmg the extra on the ba is not so important. the BA has more range...
i've not tried the BA for grief, but this is why i haven't

and i was just about to ask a question about the calculation for grief's damage cos i'm not certain how it is calculated... but it sure is a lot!

if anyone has a link or can say how the final damage from grief is calculated i'd be interested

[Spensdawg]

Thanks monkeon!

I hadn't considered the range on the BA. Is that the main reason I see much more mention of Grief BAs as opposed to PBs? For this build I dont see range being terribly important as concentrate isn't exactly the fastest killer out there and I'll probably have enemies surrounding me and in range more often than not.

[ProfessionalBerg]

Grief BA is more popular in PvP, since smiters use it, and Smite range depends on weapon range. So, a BA smiter will "outsmite" a PB smiter. But that's beside the point.

If it were me, I'd make/buy grief in a PB, due to the abovementioned advantages. Range is not so important to me.

[Tor Land]

How much does it cost to repair a grief zerker? Wondering some of the same stuff myself :) (altough no conc, just frenzy).

[Spensdawg]

Thanks for all the info guys. At this point I think I've esentially decided that a PB is the right weapon for me.

This kind of ties into the question monkeon asked earlier, but would anyone know how to calculate the damage bonus for an ethereal grief weapon? I know I remember hearing that Ethereal weapons receive a bigger bonus from ED so this might not apply to a grief weapon so much, but if it also applied to ED from skills and non-weapon gear I imagine the difference could be massive.

Thanks in advance for any info on this, and if you don't feel like writing out the formula I would appreciate a link to some sort of relevant calculator just as much, as I wouldn't mind figuring it out for myself.

[dabeas]

This kind of ties into the question monkeon asked earlier, but would anyone know how to calculate the damage bonus for an ethereal grief weapon? I know I remember hearing that Ethereal weapons receive a bigger bonus from ED so this might not apply to a grief weapon so much, but if it also applied to ED from skills and non-weapon gear I imagine the difference could be massive.


well, a pb can't be eth, so if ur making the grief in a pb don't waste ur time looking for an eth one, b/c u won't find one. but, if u were to make it in a zerker axe, it could be made eth, but i wouldn't suggest it since u wouldn't be able to repair ur weapon. ppl like the eth zerkers n cb for botd n death since both of those runewords are indistructable. the advantage is that eth weapons have 50% ed to the base stats, so a zerker for examlple has 24-71 dmg, but if it were eth it would have 36-106 dmg. and, that would be further increased by the runeword ed, leaving u w/ a much more powerful weapon then if it were made w/ a non-eth base.

[Spensdawg]

Ahh thank you, didn't know PBs couldn't be eth :grin:

Anyhow I stumbled on the damage calculator at this site and according to it the added eth damage is pretty negligible, so even the non-existent eth PB probably wouldn't be worth the extra cost. :thumbsup:

[monkeon]

Anyhow I stumbled on the damage calculator at this site:

where?! got a link?

[Spensdawg]

http://www.diabloii.net/calcs/

[BobCox]

Ahh thank you, didn't know PBs couldn't be eth :grin:

Anyhow I stumbled on the damage calculator at this site and according to it the added eth damage is pretty negligible, so even the non-existent eth PB probably wouldn't be worth the extra cost. :thumbsup:

Thats not strictly true - Dimensional blades can drop eth and be upgraded to PB Eth - see the Rare Items thread - but as white items can't get upgraded for the purpose of runewords its true.