ultrabadbob
28-08-2008, 02:11
The "Why does Fort have fcr?" Lvl 59 Pally Build thread.
Contents:
I. Intro
II. Build
a. Goals (by the numbers)
b. Stats
c. Skills
d. Gear
III. Strategies (not complete)
I. Introduction:
Hey everyone! I'm ultrabadbob and I'm addicted to Diablo II.
This is my first guide, so don't tar and feather me if I make some mistakes with regard to convention and format for build guides.
The following will be a pseudo-guide/outline of a build that I've been thinking about. I say pseudo because I haven't built the darn thing yet, largely due to just starting up on ladder again (plx gib me freeeezzzz!!!!!!).
Anyways, the birth pangs of this idea began when I was mindlessly loading dog food into boxes at my temp summer job. I started thinking about the ladder rueword "Fortitude." My train of thought went pretty much as follows:
Me: "Hmm, Fortitude. Now theres a pretty good runeword."
Myself: "Yeah, you're right. It is pretty cool. The enhanced damage makes it
a valuable addition to any melee build!"
Me: "Yeah, I mean, its got good defense, life(though unfortunately
un-BO'able...), and resists, not to mention the +5% to max lightning
resist. The only thing I cant figure out is why the heck does it have
FCR?"
Myself: "Mmm..., Hey, that's a great point! It's like when the devs were
coming up with all the runewords, they were like "Hey everyone, lets
take a completely clear cut melee runeword and add a random caster
element to boggle the minds of our customers! Oh yeah, and make it
so that they can make it in weapons and armor!"."
So, basically it comes down to this: Fortitude is a runeword that can be made in either weapons or body armor that provides a big damage boost, big defense, some resists, some life, and a fairly substantial bit of FCR (The weapon has deadly strike, courtesy of Lo ). Oh, and all of this available at level 59!
It seems that most people who use Fortitude are only taking advantage of the big damage and defense part. Bvcs use it sometimes for enhanced damage in some duels. Bowzons use it for it's big damage alone. other builds, like pure chargers, fury wolves and dumb smiters all use it for that hefty 300% enhanced damage. Also, no one ever, ever uses it as a weapon.
What I am proposing is to try to take advantage of the entire package of great mods that is Fortitude.
II. Build: I give you... ::cue drumroll:: The level 59 Dual Fortitude Liberator!!!!!!!!!
For those of you who do not know, a liberator is a paladin who uses the skills Blessed Hammer and Charge to take down his foes.
This build will take advantage of the prodigious damage mods on dual Fortitudes to fuel charge, and will use the 50% FCR provided by the same items as a base for Blessed Hammer.
a. Goals
Enjoyment!
(the rest are in no particular order)
Over 4k maximum charge damage with Fortitude weapon (not counting deadly strike)
3.4k Blessed Hammer Damage
at least 75% FCR at all times
over 2k life w/ BO
at least 35% DR
86 FHR
Max block w/ worst blocking shield
at least 5k AR with Charge*
Stacked res without Anya in NM.**
*This is not as critical as damage or survivabilty are because most of the opponents that you will be wanting to use Charge on will likely have relatively low defense.
**This is where you should probably be dueling with a lvl 59 character anyways. If somehow you can get your resists up higher, by all means, take on those lvl 90's!, but I do not envision this build being terrible effective at that. Remember, enjoyment is our #1 goal!
Now, I know some of you are already thinking "LOL n00b, forti wepz 1s teh suxx0rz!" or "Damn man, there is no way you're gonna be able to get both your hammer damage and your charge damage up high enough with that weak setup!" To you: I have realized that this build is not likely to 1 hit anything and everything that walks by. That is the realm of High level pure Hdins and other such builds.
This is meant to be a fun, alternative build that uses unpopular gear to have a good time. I think that if built right and played right, it will still be viable in a lot of good mannered duels.
b. Stats
These are pretty straightforward, most of you will likely already know the principles of statting a pvp character, but for those of you who do not, I explain...
Strength: your heaviest piece of gear is likely going to be your weapon, so build strength for that.
Dex: enough for Max Block after Holy Shield and Battle Command with your lowest block shield (probably Spirit Sacred Targe or Sacred Rondache) or enough for a phase blade (I'll elaborate in the gear section)
Vit: everything else
Nrg: nothing
Here are the numbers I came up with when I tested this build in single player:
Total Stat Points: (with three lam esen's tome quests) 310.
Strength: 142
Dexterity: 85
Vitality:153
Energy: 15
*note that these are values for a specific build and it is entirely possible to mess around with gearing and statting for yourself. These numbers are merely provided to give you, the reader, a look at what stats will roughly look like with the finished product.
c. Skills
Here is where this build, and for that matter any other MLD build, differs slightly from most high level builds.
At level 59, with all modes' skill quests, you will have 71 skill points to distribute.
Now, as stated before, you are not likely to get godly damage with either Charge or Blessed Hammer, so the goal here will be to optimize both skills with the hopes that their combined strength will be enough to beat your foes.
One good thing about this particular build is that there are two primary skills that are dually synergistic. These skills are Concentration, which improves the damage of both Charge and Blessed Hammer, and vigor, which is a synergy for both skills. A secondary addition to this is Blessed Aim, which improves the damage of Blessed Hammer, and gives a passive 5% AR bonus to melee attacks.
So basically, almost every point we commit to a main skill will improve both Charge and Blessed Hammer.
This build is about balance and the following is, as far as I can tell, the best skill layout for balancing damage between Charge and Blessed Hammer. If my testing has been inadequate and there is a more effective layout, by all means, let me know and I will redo this section. However, as far as I can tell if you mess around with this too much the damage of one of the skills will drop to unacceptable levels. Anyways...
Primary skills:
Charge: 1 pt*
Blessed Hammer: 20 pts
Concentration:16 pts
Blessed Aim: 5 pts
Vigor: 20 pts
*if this build were higher level, I would recommend more points into charge, but if you were to do this at level 59, your Hammer damage would suffer too much. If you feel your AR is too low, however, a few points taken from Blessed aim and put here may make you feel better.
1pt wonders:
Holy Shield (a must, for blocking purposes, only 1 pt due to aforementioned damage issues)
Fanaticism
Salvation
(these two are up to you, if you feel like you do not need a resists crutch, do not put a point in Salvation. I do however, strongly recommend Fanaticism for Smiting purposes if you have a Grief that you can use. There is never a time when having the option of switching to Grief-Smite is not a good idea.)
Prerequisites: 6 pts total.
d. Gear
To start off this section, I'd like to highlight a few things about this build.
This is not the be all and end all for MLD Liberator Paladins. I'm sure that there is a better way to make such a character. However, the point of this build is to delve into the impossible reasoning for one of the mods on one of the most popular items and to have fun while doing it.
That said, it can be assumed that you shouldn't be following this guide if you do not intend to include a Fortitude weapon and armor combo in your setup.
Secondly, this is not going to be cheap, especially with the way the ladder economy is right after a reset. Expect to spend many hrs making this build. I am.
So, without further ado, lets talk about gear.
Weapon(s):
The obvious weapon that you will be using in the majority of situations with this build will be a Fortitude weapon. It offers okay damage, 20% deadly strike, life per level, up to 30 resists, and a substantial boost to defense, not to mention the crucial 25% FCR.
With respect to the base weapon, there are a few things to consider.
First, since this is a build that uses charge as it's main melee attack, attack speed is a non-issue and thus by default, so is Fortitude's lack of this otherwise critical mod.
Second, this is a level 59 build, so we are limited by the level requirement of the base weapon. This means that we cannot use Legendary Mallets, which have the highest damage of all 1 handed weapons. I guess that's not actually so bad since they also have the highest strength requirement of all 1 handed weapons.
This leaves us with three top options:
Fortitude Conquest Sword
Fortitude Ettin Axe
Fortitude Scourge
On paper, the Ettin Axe is probably the best, it has a little bit better damage for not that much higher requirements. However, in the spirit of the build, for my testing, I used the Conquest Sword because I mean, come on? Who uses Conquest Swords? Besides, I like the name better.
A recently raised point about the Ettin Axe and Conquest Sword is the fact that both only have a range of 2. I though I remembered reading somewhere that for the purposes of Charge, as low a range as possible is the best option. However, I do not remember where I read that, nor do I remember the reputability of the source. Thus, I will include the suggestion of a Fortitude Scourge. This has a range of three and lower requirements than either of the other two options. However, it does not have a very good damage range (very low min damage and high max damage). I feel that this is a problem for a Charge based build for the following reason. Charge is an attack that that is not used to score multiple hits in short succession but rather, one that relies on fewer, stronger hits. Thus, damage consistency is important. Also, I don't think that Scourges look very cool.
I have recently finished some build testing of a Fortitude Scourge. As expected, it has substantially higher maximum damage and substantially lower minimum damage than either the Fortitude Ettin Axe or the Fortitude Conquest Sword. However, the average damage of the Fortitude Scourge is still somewhat lower than either of the other two options, and IIRC, it has been objectively proven that having a higher average damage and having a tighter damage range is more successful (from the Grief vs. eBotD controversy).
Regarding range, there is apparently some controversy over whether it is important or not for the Charge skill. According to SSoG’s guide to Charging, either a range 1 weapon or a range 5 weapon are ideal, but anything in between is less desireable. Apparently, when using charge, the shorter your range the easier it is to set up charge chains, and with a Fortitude weapon’s overall low damage, Charge chains would be ideal.
::Note:: I do not deny the fact that weapon range is a crucial thing to consider with a variety of other builds. However, according to my research it is not as critical with regards to the Charge skill.
In the Stash, I recommend having at least an Umm'd Suicide Branch for going pure hammer and some kind of Grief for smiting (The purpose of the Um in the Suicide Branch is to give you a source of open wounds when you are facing opponents who play extremely defensively).
It is possible to make your pure hammer setup with a Hoto, but you will require an FCR ring. If you really want to, you could get a HoZ, some godly Pally FCR circlet and FCR rings and ammy, but if your going to do that, you might as well be making a pure Hammerdin in the first place.
The Hoto option ends up with much more damage than the Suicide Branch one, but it loses out on the potential OW from Um. The viablility of both of these setups will become more apparent when I am able to test both of them in real situations.
As for smiting, I tested out two different Griefs:
Grief Phase Blade
Grief War Spike
On paper, the Phase Blade is definitely better. However, the dexterity requirement causes us to lose up to almost 700 life. If that is not an issue, the Phase Blade does not require any additional IAS (assuming 40 ias on weapon) other than Fanaticism to reach decent smite speed. The War Spike requires 20 additional off weapon IAS (assuming perfect ias roll) to reach a good speed.
For a build using either Fortitude Ettin Axe or Fortitude Conquest Sword, the Grief War Spike can be equipped without any additionaly stat points having to be added. The Phase Blade will require more points into dexterity.
If your build is using a Fortutude Scourge, however, it is recommended that you use an exceptional/normal weapon as a base for Grief, so that no additional stat points are required. This is possible because the only thing about the base weapon that affects Grief's effectiveness is the base weapon speed. Grief does almost the same damage whether it's made in a Crystal Sword or a Berzerker Axe.
Possible options include a Naga/War Axe or a Crowbill/Military Pick.
Another thing that I played around with was an eDeath Ettin Axe. This runeword is the creme d'la creme for chargers, and I was thinking that since we have a pure hammer setup, why not have a pure charger setup? My testing indicated that an eDeath Ettin Axe does slightly more damage with Charge than the Grief War Spike, which in turn, does a fair bit more damage than the Fortitude Conquest Sword (remember the point of the build though). Plus, I think that eDeath weapons are pretty cool.
Armor:
Fortitude ______
It has all the same mods as the weapon, except instead of 20% deadly strike, it has +5% maximum lightning resist, which is very nice.
Defense wise, a Great Hauberk has the highest of the light armors we can use at level 59, but in the long run a few points of base defense isn't going to make or break the build.
Guardian Angel and Shaftstop are defintely good ideas to carry around in your stash for more resists and DR%, respectively.
Helm:
I would recommend either an Umm'd//ED/IAS jewel'd Vampiric Gaze with as much DR% as you can find or some kind of godly pally circlet with resists, skills, FCR and sockets. Might be good to have both, especially if you are using Hoto instead of Suicide Branch.
Belt:
15 DR% String of Ears. Without it, you will feel the bite of your opponents' physical attacks.
For your FCR pure Hammerdin Setup, you might opt for a crafted caster belt with 10 FCR to help close the fcr gap between Hoto and Suicide Branch.
Like any pvp char, you might consider having TGods and or Snowclash in your stash for those special moments when you need to sorb.
Boots:
Gore Riders or War Travelers
Both are excellent. War Travelers will net you more life and a bit more raw damage, but Gores give you a source of open wounds, crushing blow and some more deadly strike.
Personally, I go with Gores.
Hotspur is a good stash item for this slot.
Good (FHR, FRW, RES, Stats) rare boots are always nice, if you don't feel like using Gores or Travs, as are high life Waterwalks.
Shield:
45 res (or as high as you can get) 35 FCR Spirit Sacred Targe or Sacred Rondache. IMHO, Sacred Targe is slightly better because of lower requirements and a higher chance to block.
A good stash item you might want to have is a Sanctuary 45 res Sacred Targe or Sacred Rondache for resist stacking. A perfect roll on this item is the best piece of stack in the game.
NOTE: I have not tested a HoZ build with this character, because I feel that using HoZ instead of Spirit would cause too many other good mods to be sacrificed in order to make up for HoZ's lack of FCR.
Gloves:
Trang Oul's Claws are the best default gloves I can think of, though some nice rares might be better.
If you use a Grief War Spike for smiting, then you will need 20% ias gloves to reach a decent speed. Lava Gouts are nice because they can proc Enchant, which gives a decent AR boost. Otherwise, use whatever 20% IAS gloves you want, its up to you.
Rings:
1st ring: Bul-Kathos Wedding Band or Stone of Jordan. IMHO, SoJ is better because the big mana boost reduces the build’s dependence on mana potions to stay fighting. Also, the life from BK is non-BOable. In the end, either one is fine since the differences between them are slight.
Originally, I thought that the Angelic Amulet/Ring combo would be the ideal one for this build. However, in response to recent criticisms of the importance that I placed on AR, I conducted more fiddling with gear/skill combinations. I was able to determine that at most, the use of Angelics only adds around 1.5k total AR, which will be irrelevant anyways due to the fact that most of the opponents that you will be wanting to use Charge on will have relatively low defense. Also, no amount of AR stops max block from hamstringing charge in the first place.
However, if you are in need of cheap, useful items to put in the ring/ammy slot, Angelics is still probably the second best option to a rare/crafted ammy and SoJ/BK.
Your other ring should always be a Raven Frost with as high Dexterity and AR as you can get. You should build the Dexterity into your character reduce the amount of stats you need to sink into Dexterity to achieve max block. Since we use charge, the Cannot Be Frozen mod is what makes this item so critical.
You might consider having a good FCR ring in your stash for your pure Hammer setup along with another Raven Frost and a Dwarf Star for sorbing purposes.
Amulet:
2 Pally Combat 10 FCR amulet. These two mods are essential. Other mods are gravy, but get whatever you can (i. e. life, stats, resists). The Cat’s Eye and Angelics (combined with the ring) are also good options.
Charms:
This is where the build gets really expensive.
I went with 4 PComb lifers and the rest Max/AR/Lifer SCs with enough Max/AR/Fhr SCs for 86 FHR in my testing.
If you feel like fiddling around with the skill layout, you can use different ratios of PCombs to SCs if you like.
III. Strategies (not complete)
As I have not actually built this character yet, and seen how he does in real situations, I do not feel that I should, in good conscience, postulate dueling strategies until that juncture. However, once I have built the character, I will come and add to this guide.
Please feel free to post comments or constructive criticisms.
I will not respond to anyl criticisms of the build with regard to the decision to use dual Fortitudes. However, because I know that this build is not going to be "l334 z0mg haxx0rz awex0me!!!!!111!!1!1". It is a fun experiment and I want to see what you guys think.
I would like to thank Mythos for writing his Liberator guide, which I read and got many of the concepts for this build from prior to writing this. Thanks also to SSoG for the writing of his awesome Charging guide. I would also like to thank everyone on this forum for creating an environment where nearly scientific analyses of aspects of a game can occur. Finally, I would like to thank the people at Blizzard Entertainment for making the game that we all know and love.
Im Out!!!!
Contents:
I. Intro
II. Build
a. Goals (by the numbers)
b. Stats
c. Skills
d. Gear
III. Strategies (not complete)
I. Introduction:
Hey everyone! I'm ultrabadbob and I'm addicted to Diablo II.
This is my first guide, so don't tar and feather me if I make some mistakes with regard to convention and format for build guides.
The following will be a pseudo-guide/outline of a build that I've been thinking about. I say pseudo because I haven't built the darn thing yet, largely due to just starting up on ladder again (plx gib me freeeezzzz!!!!!!).
Anyways, the birth pangs of this idea began when I was mindlessly loading dog food into boxes at my temp summer job. I started thinking about the ladder rueword "Fortitude." My train of thought went pretty much as follows:
Me: "Hmm, Fortitude. Now theres a pretty good runeword."
Myself: "Yeah, you're right. It is pretty cool. The enhanced damage makes it
a valuable addition to any melee build!"
Me: "Yeah, I mean, its got good defense, life(though unfortunately
un-BO'able...), and resists, not to mention the +5% to max lightning
resist. The only thing I cant figure out is why the heck does it have
FCR?"
Myself: "Mmm..., Hey, that's a great point! It's like when the devs were
coming up with all the runewords, they were like "Hey everyone, lets
take a completely clear cut melee runeword and add a random caster
element to boggle the minds of our customers! Oh yeah, and make it
so that they can make it in weapons and armor!"."
So, basically it comes down to this: Fortitude is a runeword that can be made in either weapons or body armor that provides a big damage boost, big defense, some resists, some life, and a fairly substantial bit of FCR (The weapon has deadly strike, courtesy of Lo ). Oh, and all of this available at level 59!
It seems that most people who use Fortitude are only taking advantage of the big damage and defense part. Bvcs use it sometimes for enhanced damage in some duels. Bowzons use it for it's big damage alone. other builds, like pure chargers, fury wolves and dumb smiters all use it for that hefty 300% enhanced damage. Also, no one ever, ever uses it as a weapon.
What I am proposing is to try to take advantage of the entire package of great mods that is Fortitude.
II. Build: I give you... ::cue drumroll:: The level 59 Dual Fortitude Liberator!!!!!!!!!
For those of you who do not know, a liberator is a paladin who uses the skills Blessed Hammer and Charge to take down his foes.
This build will take advantage of the prodigious damage mods on dual Fortitudes to fuel charge, and will use the 50% FCR provided by the same items as a base for Blessed Hammer.
a. Goals
Enjoyment!
(the rest are in no particular order)
Over 4k maximum charge damage with Fortitude weapon (not counting deadly strike)
3.4k Blessed Hammer Damage
at least 75% FCR at all times
over 2k life w/ BO
at least 35% DR
86 FHR
Max block w/ worst blocking shield
at least 5k AR with Charge*
Stacked res without Anya in NM.**
*This is not as critical as damage or survivabilty are because most of the opponents that you will be wanting to use Charge on will likely have relatively low defense.
**This is where you should probably be dueling with a lvl 59 character anyways. If somehow you can get your resists up higher, by all means, take on those lvl 90's!, but I do not envision this build being terrible effective at that. Remember, enjoyment is our #1 goal!
Now, I know some of you are already thinking "LOL n00b, forti wepz 1s teh suxx0rz!" or "Damn man, there is no way you're gonna be able to get both your hammer damage and your charge damage up high enough with that weak setup!" To you: I have realized that this build is not likely to 1 hit anything and everything that walks by. That is the realm of High level pure Hdins and other such builds.
This is meant to be a fun, alternative build that uses unpopular gear to have a good time. I think that if built right and played right, it will still be viable in a lot of good mannered duels.
b. Stats
These are pretty straightforward, most of you will likely already know the principles of statting a pvp character, but for those of you who do not, I explain...
Strength: your heaviest piece of gear is likely going to be your weapon, so build strength for that.
Dex: enough for Max Block after Holy Shield and Battle Command with your lowest block shield (probably Spirit Sacred Targe or Sacred Rondache) or enough for a phase blade (I'll elaborate in the gear section)
Vit: everything else
Nrg: nothing
Here are the numbers I came up with when I tested this build in single player:
Total Stat Points: (with three lam esen's tome quests) 310.
Strength: 142
Dexterity: 85
Vitality:153
Energy: 15
*note that these are values for a specific build and it is entirely possible to mess around with gearing and statting for yourself. These numbers are merely provided to give you, the reader, a look at what stats will roughly look like with the finished product.
c. Skills
Here is where this build, and for that matter any other MLD build, differs slightly from most high level builds.
At level 59, with all modes' skill quests, you will have 71 skill points to distribute.
Now, as stated before, you are not likely to get godly damage with either Charge or Blessed Hammer, so the goal here will be to optimize both skills with the hopes that their combined strength will be enough to beat your foes.
One good thing about this particular build is that there are two primary skills that are dually synergistic. These skills are Concentration, which improves the damage of both Charge and Blessed Hammer, and vigor, which is a synergy for both skills. A secondary addition to this is Blessed Aim, which improves the damage of Blessed Hammer, and gives a passive 5% AR bonus to melee attacks.
So basically, almost every point we commit to a main skill will improve both Charge and Blessed Hammer.
This build is about balance and the following is, as far as I can tell, the best skill layout for balancing damage between Charge and Blessed Hammer. If my testing has been inadequate and there is a more effective layout, by all means, let me know and I will redo this section. However, as far as I can tell if you mess around with this too much the damage of one of the skills will drop to unacceptable levels. Anyways...
Primary skills:
Charge: 1 pt*
Blessed Hammer: 20 pts
Concentration:16 pts
Blessed Aim: 5 pts
Vigor: 20 pts
*if this build were higher level, I would recommend more points into charge, but if you were to do this at level 59, your Hammer damage would suffer too much. If you feel your AR is too low, however, a few points taken from Blessed aim and put here may make you feel better.
1pt wonders:
Holy Shield (a must, for blocking purposes, only 1 pt due to aforementioned damage issues)
Fanaticism
Salvation
(these two are up to you, if you feel like you do not need a resists crutch, do not put a point in Salvation. I do however, strongly recommend Fanaticism for Smiting purposes if you have a Grief that you can use. There is never a time when having the option of switching to Grief-Smite is not a good idea.)
Prerequisites: 6 pts total.
d. Gear
To start off this section, I'd like to highlight a few things about this build.
This is not the be all and end all for MLD Liberator Paladins. I'm sure that there is a better way to make such a character. However, the point of this build is to delve into the impossible reasoning for one of the mods on one of the most popular items and to have fun while doing it.
That said, it can be assumed that you shouldn't be following this guide if you do not intend to include a Fortitude weapon and armor combo in your setup.
Secondly, this is not going to be cheap, especially with the way the ladder economy is right after a reset. Expect to spend many hrs making this build. I am.
So, without further ado, lets talk about gear.
Weapon(s):
The obvious weapon that you will be using in the majority of situations with this build will be a Fortitude weapon. It offers okay damage, 20% deadly strike, life per level, up to 30 resists, and a substantial boost to defense, not to mention the crucial 25% FCR.
With respect to the base weapon, there are a few things to consider.
First, since this is a build that uses charge as it's main melee attack, attack speed is a non-issue and thus by default, so is Fortitude's lack of this otherwise critical mod.
Second, this is a level 59 build, so we are limited by the level requirement of the base weapon. This means that we cannot use Legendary Mallets, which have the highest damage of all 1 handed weapons. I guess that's not actually so bad since they also have the highest strength requirement of all 1 handed weapons.
This leaves us with three top options:
Fortitude Conquest Sword
Fortitude Ettin Axe
Fortitude Scourge
On paper, the Ettin Axe is probably the best, it has a little bit better damage for not that much higher requirements. However, in the spirit of the build, for my testing, I used the Conquest Sword because I mean, come on? Who uses Conquest Swords? Besides, I like the name better.
A recently raised point about the Ettin Axe and Conquest Sword is the fact that both only have a range of 2. I though I remembered reading somewhere that for the purposes of Charge, as low a range as possible is the best option. However, I do not remember where I read that, nor do I remember the reputability of the source. Thus, I will include the suggestion of a Fortitude Scourge. This has a range of three and lower requirements than either of the other two options. However, it does not have a very good damage range (very low min damage and high max damage). I feel that this is a problem for a Charge based build for the following reason. Charge is an attack that that is not used to score multiple hits in short succession but rather, one that relies on fewer, stronger hits. Thus, damage consistency is important. Also, I don't think that Scourges look very cool.
I have recently finished some build testing of a Fortitude Scourge. As expected, it has substantially higher maximum damage and substantially lower minimum damage than either the Fortitude Ettin Axe or the Fortitude Conquest Sword. However, the average damage of the Fortitude Scourge is still somewhat lower than either of the other two options, and IIRC, it has been objectively proven that having a higher average damage and having a tighter damage range is more successful (from the Grief vs. eBotD controversy).
Regarding range, there is apparently some controversy over whether it is important or not for the Charge skill. According to SSoG’s guide to Charging, either a range 1 weapon or a range 5 weapon are ideal, but anything in between is less desireable. Apparently, when using charge, the shorter your range the easier it is to set up charge chains, and with a Fortitude weapon’s overall low damage, Charge chains would be ideal.
::Note:: I do not deny the fact that weapon range is a crucial thing to consider with a variety of other builds. However, according to my research it is not as critical with regards to the Charge skill.
In the Stash, I recommend having at least an Umm'd Suicide Branch for going pure hammer and some kind of Grief for smiting (The purpose of the Um in the Suicide Branch is to give you a source of open wounds when you are facing opponents who play extremely defensively).
It is possible to make your pure hammer setup with a Hoto, but you will require an FCR ring. If you really want to, you could get a HoZ, some godly Pally FCR circlet and FCR rings and ammy, but if your going to do that, you might as well be making a pure Hammerdin in the first place.
The Hoto option ends up with much more damage than the Suicide Branch one, but it loses out on the potential OW from Um. The viablility of both of these setups will become more apparent when I am able to test both of them in real situations.
As for smiting, I tested out two different Griefs:
Grief Phase Blade
Grief War Spike
On paper, the Phase Blade is definitely better. However, the dexterity requirement causes us to lose up to almost 700 life. If that is not an issue, the Phase Blade does not require any additional IAS (assuming 40 ias on weapon) other than Fanaticism to reach decent smite speed. The War Spike requires 20 additional off weapon IAS (assuming perfect ias roll) to reach a good speed.
For a build using either Fortitude Ettin Axe or Fortitude Conquest Sword, the Grief War Spike can be equipped without any additionaly stat points having to be added. The Phase Blade will require more points into dexterity.
If your build is using a Fortutude Scourge, however, it is recommended that you use an exceptional/normal weapon as a base for Grief, so that no additional stat points are required. This is possible because the only thing about the base weapon that affects Grief's effectiveness is the base weapon speed. Grief does almost the same damage whether it's made in a Crystal Sword or a Berzerker Axe.
Possible options include a Naga/War Axe or a Crowbill/Military Pick.
Another thing that I played around with was an eDeath Ettin Axe. This runeword is the creme d'la creme for chargers, and I was thinking that since we have a pure hammer setup, why not have a pure charger setup? My testing indicated that an eDeath Ettin Axe does slightly more damage with Charge than the Grief War Spike, which in turn, does a fair bit more damage than the Fortitude Conquest Sword (remember the point of the build though). Plus, I think that eDeath weapons are pretty cool.
Armor:
Fortitude ______
It has all the same mods as the weapon, except instead of 20% deadly strike, it has +5% maximum lightning resist, which is very nice.
Defense wise, a Great Hauberk has the highest of the light armors we can use at level 59, but in the long run a few points of base defense isn't going to make or break the build.
Guardian Angel and Shaftstop are defintely good ideas to carry around in your stash for more resists and DR%, respectively.
Helm:
I would recommend either an Umm'd//ED/IAS jewel'd Vampiric Gaze with as much DR% as you can find or some kind of godly pally circlet with resists, skills, FCR and sockets. Might be good to have both, especially if you are using Hoto instead of Suicide Branch.
Belt:
15 DR% String of Ears. Without it, you will feel the bite of your opponents' physical attacks.
For your FCR pure Hammerdin Setup, you might opt for a crafted caster belt with 10 FCR to help close the fcr gap between Hoto and Suicide Branch.
Like any pvp char, you might consider having TGods and or Snowclash in your stash for those special moments when you need to sorb.
Boots:
Gore Riders or War Travelers
Both are excellent. War Travelers will net you more life and a bit more raw damage, but Gores give you a source of open wounds, crushing blow and some more deadly strike.
Personally, I go with Gores.
Hotspur is a good stash item for this slot.
Good (FHR, FRW, RES, Stats) rare boots are always nice, if you don't feel like using Gores or Travs, as are high life Waterwalks.
Shield:
45 res (or as high as you can get) 35 FCR Spirit Sacred Targe or Sacred Rondache. IMHO, Sacred Targe is slightly better because of lower requirements and a higher chance to block.
A good stash item you might want to have is a Sanctuary 45 res Sacred Targe or Sacred Rondache for resist stacking. A perfect roll on this item is the best piece of stack in the game.
NOTE: I have not tested a HoZ build with this character, because I feel that using HoZ instead of Spirit would cause too many other good mods to be sacrificed in order to make up for HoZ's lack of FCR.
Gloves:
Trang Oul's Claws are the best default gloves I can think of, though some nice rares might be better.
If you use a Grief War Spike for smiting, then you will need 20% ias gloves to reach a decent speed. Lava Gouts are nice because they can proc Enchant, which gives a decent AR boost. Otherwise, use whatever 20% IAS gloves you want, its up to you.
Rings:
1st ring: Bul-Kathos Wedding Band or Stone of Jordan. IMHO, SoJ is better because the big mana boost reduces the build’s dependence on mana potions to stay fighting. Also, the life from BK is non-BOable. In the end, either one is fine since the differences between them are slight.
Originally, I thought that the Angelic Amulet/Ring combo would be the ideal one for this build. However, in response to recent criticisms of the importance that I placed on AR, I conducted more fiddling with gear/skill combinations. I was able to determine that at most, the use of Angelics only adds around 1.5k total AR, which will be irrelevant anyways due to the fact that most of the opponents that you will be wanting to use Charge on will have relatively low defense. Also, no amount of AR stops max block from hamstringing charge in the first place.
However, if you are in need of cheap, useful items to put in the ring/ammy slot, Angelics is still probably the second best option to a rare/crafted ammy and SoJ/BK.
Your other ring should always be a Raven Frost with as high Dexterity and AR as you can get. You should build the Dexterity into your character reduce the amount of stats you need to sink into Dexterity to achieve max block. Since we use charge, the Cannot Be Frozen mod is what makes this item so critical.
You might consider having a good FCR ring in your stash for your pure Hammer setup along with another Raven Frost and a Dwarf Star for sorbing purposes.
Amulet:
2 Pally Combat 10 FCR amulet. These two mods are essential. Other mods are gravy, but get whatever you can (i. e. life, stats, resists). The Cat’s Eye and Angelics (combined with the ring) are also good options.
Charms:
This is where the build gets really expensive.
I went with 4 PComb lifers and the rest Max/AR/Lifer SCs with enough Max/AR/Fhr SCs for 86 FHR in my testing.
If you feel like fiddling around with the skill layout, you can use different ratios of PCombs to SCs if you like.
III. Strategies (not complete)
As I have not actually built this character yet, and seen how he does in real situations, I do not feel that I should, in good conscience, postulate dueling strategies until that juncture. However, once I have built the character, I will come and add to this guide.
Please feel free to post comments or constructive criticisms.
I will not respond to anyl criticisms of the build with regard to the decision to use dual Fortitudes. However, because I know that this build is not going to be "l334 z0mg haxx0rz awex0me!!!!!111!!1!1". It is a fun experiment and I want to see what you guys think.
I would like to thank Mythos for writing his Liberator guide, which I read and got many of the concepts for this build from prior to writing this. Thanks also to SSoG for the writing of his awesome Charging guide. I would also like to thank everyone on this forum for creating an environment where nearly scientific analyses of aspects of a game can occur. Finally, I would like to thank the people at Blizzard Entertainment for making the game that we all know and love.
Im Out!!!!