What do you think about this as a high budget all purpose primary MF/rusher?

[Plinko]

It's been a while since I built a zon (last time I played was 1.09).

I was thinking something along the lines of:

[Passive]
1 Dodge
1 Avoid
1 Evade
1 Critical
1 Penetrate
1 Pierce
1 Inner Sight
1 Slow Missiles

[Bow / Crossbow]
1 Magic Arrow
1 Multi-Shot
1 Cold Arrow
1 Guided Arrow
1 Strafe

[Javelins]
1 Jab
1 Power Strike
1 Poison Javs
1 Plague Javs
20 Lightning Bolt
20 Charged Strike
20 Lightning Fury
20 Lightning Strike

At this point we used 97 skills. After factoring in skill quests this should put as at level 86, leaving us with 13 skill points to spend if you decide to go all the way to 99.

I'm not really sure where the put the other 13. There's a few options.

A. We could add 2 more points into the passive tree and then get a Valk but that doesn't seem worth it. It will die pretty fast with only 1 base point yeah?

B. A few points into multi-shot also seems reasonable to give it a huge spread.

C. Put 9 of the 13 into strafe, and then dump the 4 extra into multi-shot.

If we figure we'll have +10 skills to bows that would put strafe at +100% damage and multi-shot will be firing 16 arrows.

D. Dump it all into power strike for added Jav damage.

The idea behind this amazon would be to use javs on bosses and huge packs and the bow for everything else. You also have the choice of using bows whenever you want (except for bosses, since charged strike would obviously be better in almost every case).

The goal is to be able to MF anywhere (act bosses, pits, cows, assorted A5, ubers, etc.) with maximum efficiency.

Gear would look something like:
(Feel free to leave comments on more efficient gear for kill speed / MF)

[Helm]
SteelSkull w/ IAS+Misc Jewel

[Chest]
Enigma (Probably archon plate so you can get by with base Str, although I'd love to use Wirefleece but I can't see how to get 111 Str with base Str)

[Boots]
Travs

[Belt]
Razortail

[Gloves]
Rare/Crafted +2 Javs / 20% IAS / ML / Stats

[Amulet]
Rare/Crafted +2 Skills

[Ring]
Raven

[Ring]
Rare/Crafted with ideal stats

[Weapon]
Upped Ethereal Titans / Rhyme Heater
-
Faith Matri Bow

20% IAS gloves, Steelskull (10%), 15% IAS Jewel = 45 IAS
This should give us a 7 frame multi-shot with level 14/15 Fanat, correct?

[Charms]
4x Javelin skills
1x Gheeds
1x Resist All + ?
1x Torch / 2x SMFCs
1x Anni
6x SMFCs

Total Bow Skills: +10
Total Jav Skills: +16

Total MF:
50 SteelSkull, 90 Enigma (level 90 seems realistic), 45-50 Travs, 25 Rhyme, 35-40 Gheeds, 56 SMFCs
301-310 MF with the possibility of having more on your gloves/necklace/ring

I also wouldn't mind using an Isted Monarch for cows and replacing some jav skillers with more MF to hit 400+ because I'm pretty sure the kill speed would be good enough. Heck this might even be good enough for everything as I've never tested such a beast of a character before.

[Merc]
A2 Might merc
Infinity weapon
Whatever gear he needs to stay alive while maximizing being able to survive and MF.

[Stats]
100% full Dex

What do you think?

The only downside I see is dealing with PI+LI uniques. I'm not sure how to battle them yet. Will convinction be enough to let our lightning damage bypass the LI?

Another downside is SteelSkull is almost as ugly as Tal's Mask. Griffon would be so much better, but losing 50 MF is kind of a lot on a char that's meant to MF. It's also going to throw off the IAS and force me to switch to Highlords which means I'm losing potential resists/stats/MF from a crafted/rare amulet.

A nice perk is you should be able to make this character without needing uber items straight off the bat.
Switch out the Faith for a Harmony and ditch the Enigma for Skullders (or a ton of other armor choices) and now you have the low budget version.

[Dacar92]

You can place the extra points in pierce. Get it as close to 100 as possible. If you're looking for a way to kill LI's switch out Razortail for Thundergod's (but only when you run into the LI's. Otherwise stick with Razortail for the pierce). The extra skills wil be nice. Also, with all the uber gear you've listed it should be no problem getting your hands on a Griffin's eye to replace that SteelSkull when you run into those LI's too. You'll lose a little MF but you'll also kill those guys.

[zallus]

You will run into very limited amounts of LI's. Your merc carrying the infinity stick will break almost all of the immune monsters. I personally don't see the point in having bow skills at all when you list such good equipment but that is just me.

Also I agree with Decar that you should change your helmet. I would use either Griffon's like he said or a Shako.

[Dacar92]

Agreed with the point of carrying infinity. If you put on Griff's the lower resist is more. No need for any bow skills in this build. And I edited my last post above.

[Plinko]

I don't mind LIs in general. They will be taken care of by multi/strafe unless convinction will break their immunity without griffon's? It was the Physical Immune + Lightning Immune uniques that pop up from time to time that could be a problem.

Btw is there a reason you're saying switch out a razor? I was under the impression razortail adds 33% pierce. 1 base + 4 skills = level 5 razor = 55% + 33 = 88% pierce. Alternatively having 9 total would just put you over the 100 mark with razor.

Has anyone directly compared level 24ish pierce without a razor vs using a razor with only 1 point+skills in pierce -- how did it turn out? Both should give the same amount of pierce on paper. Something like this would allow you use a goldwrap (mainly for the IAS and slight MF boost) and griffon's.

I don't have any of this gear yet btw. I'm using the "low budget" version at the moment without skullders or travs and it's working pretty well but I only just started NM baal runs yesterday.

I figured a bow would be handy to deal with certain situations. I don't think anything kills chaos sanct faster than multi spam? Also the bow is useful when there's not so many monsters spread apart. Plus the merc can die in chaos, and without convinction I'd be screwed vs LIs.

[Dacar92]

No reason to use TGods except I like the extra skills. If you're using Multi/strafe to handle LI's that is fine but in hell they might be slow to kill without a heavy investment in one of them (waste of points to go both)

Razortail plus 9 more points in pierce to get 100, iirc.

[Plinko]

5 hard points in multi-shot + skills should give us 16 arrows with multi-shot. This wouldn't be good enough? Remember we'll have might+fanat running too with a 7 frame multi.

If we ditch the extra 9 points in strafe then the build could be done at level 90 and anything after that is gravy. I did a bit more research on strafe and the general census is that the more dex you have, the less damage adding hard points in strafe adds? The numbers alone are misleading, I thought +100% more damage would be a ton.

I don't mind TGods (str/vit+lightning absorb is good too) but it would require a heavy investment in pierce to live without razor.

If you removed all the bow skills you could do either:

1. Put 19 points into the final synergy for CS/LF.
2. Keep your lightning skills as is but max out pierce and use a different belt.

[Plinko]

I might take your advice btw about just not doing anything with bows.

I came across a zon who happened to have a faith matri. He let me watch him kill stuff to demonstrate it in a 2 player hell game.

I don't know what his gear/build was and he was only level 79 but the kill speed was kind of a joke really. Ridiculously slow (he said his damage was 1.2k multi which seems a bit low). Are bows really this bad in 1.10 or did he have poor gear?

Since we're talking pure javs now, what do you think about Thunderstrokes instead of Titans? You lose a bit from your passives but would the 15% lower lightning resist mod make up for it? If we're talking about a minimum of 7-8k CS damage 15% seems like a lot spread over 10-11 bolts.

[Dacar92]

Not sure what to say about that guy's zon. Maybe he was short on IAS. I prefer strafe but it is a personal preference, not one that is shared by everyone. Read this thread if you're interested in the strafe Vs multi argument.

http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=442141

Thunderstrokes is great to switch to for LI's. The higher (usually) physical damage can help a lot. But they do not have a replenish mod, which is why most people use Titans. Titans cost only 1 gold to repair, leaving you a lot of gold to help other addictions.....like gambling. :whistling:

[Plinko]

LIs will not exist though with -100% LR right?

Ah, forgot about the replenish mod. Maybe they would be good to use just for bosses.

[Dacar92]

No, some of them have more than 100% lit resist. But you'll break the resistance and kill them quick enough.

[Plinko]

Yep, good stuff.

Btw in case anyone is curious with this new info (full javs) I'm going to most likely use titans + a 4 ist'd monarch as a main weapon with wizard spike + spirit shield on switch (for teleport speed). Should be around ~360 MF full time without worrying about a weapon switch.

With a griffon's or 20% extra FCR somewhere else you'll be able to hit a 12 frame teleport. Unless 1.10 changed something I'm pretty sure a naked sorc teles at 13 frames. 12 is pretty gross (when you're spoiled with a 7/8 frame sorc) but it's not too bad.

Edit:
1 last question, which isn't relevant to any of this but doesn't require a new thread...

Does the torch proc still crash games (I never played 1.10 but a few months ago in some older threads they reported that it does).
It would be a real shame to not be able to use a torch. :(

[Dacar92]

I.ve been in (mostly baal runs) games with torches and they crashed. My torch proc'd all the time because I was using strafe. But people complained to take it off and sometimes games crashed and sometimes they didn't.