Can i make a Brand-aZon?

[MCpl Slackbag]

Hi all. I've had a look at the Brand runeword, and i LOVE how it has 100% chance to cast BSpear on striking. It would look REALLY cool with strafe, think of all the spears flying everywhere! Not only that, but it has chance to cast High Level Amp Damage when struck, which isnt so cool, but it helps. And another bunch of gravy mods. i like it.
Have a look with me:

35% Chance to cast level 14 Amplify Damage when struck
100% Chance to cast level 18 Bone Spear on striking
Fires Explosive Arrows or Bolts
+260-340% Enhanced Damage
Ignore Target's Defense
20% bonus to Attack Rating
+280-330% Damage to Demons
20% Deadly Strike
Prevent Monster Heal
Knockback

the only thing its missing is a little IAS.
apparently, with a faith merc, i'd only need 20Ias to hit the fastest BP. Cool beans, if im right.

So here's what i think:
i'll use the explosive arrows as a secondary source of damage.

20 Fire Arrow
20 Valk (super tank)
1 Strafe (im kinda new to zons, this is fine, right?)
rest into passives, but idk where. help?

helm: ?
ammy: atma's
wep: Brand MB of course
armor: fort
gloves: IAS gloves?
rings: dual Ravenfrosts
belt: razortail?
boots: ?

pvm of course.
help/your thoughts?

[NASE]

Do you want to go pure strafe or not. Generally, it's consider better to always combine multishot with strafe and to make your breakpoint around multi and not strafe - there isn't something like a /2 strafe eventhough it shows up in the game. it's a bug.

So with that in mind, you need to choice between a matriarchal bow - and 7fpa attack - and gmb - and I would say 8 fpa attack. I'll list some suggestion gear, yet eventually, it's very similar to what you can find in one of the guides:

helm: giant skull with ias jewels.
ammy: atma's - assuming that you don't need ias.
wep: Brand
armor: fort
gloves: loh - ias and even more ed to demons.
rings: dual Ravenfrosts - I would go for raven/dual leech stats ring.
belt: razortail.
boots: war trav or gores or tripple resistance boots if you really want resistance. It's your choice.


P.S. Note that the huge ctc means that getting hit isn't that much of a problem, it will just make the monsters die faster. With that in mind, I wouldn't go for a low life build.

[0blique]

You should have more than 1 point in strafe, depending on how much +skills you have. At the minimum, you should be able to fire up to 10 arrows, so that means level 5 after bonuses. You fire an additional arrow at minimum with each 4 points you put into to it, so 8 and 12 points are good places to reach after bonuses. You can go higher too if you want to focus in strafe and have extra points to spare.

Also, you might already know this, but change to cast only works on the two middle arrows of multishot. Just imagine how many spears you'd get if it worked on all of them.

[TopHatCat64]

Man, if that 35% CTC Amp was on striking, Brand would be hell on wheels.

I'd agree with Nase and build a zon that can take a couple of hits.

-Freezing arrow might be an interesting option. You could freeze half a group and limit the number of hits you're taking to trigger amp. At 35%, amp should be going off very quickly.

- % Damage reduction/pdr could be helpful, as well. Just cuz you have to get hit, doesn't mean it has to hurt

-I can envisions a zon like this zipping back and forth from melee range to a couple steps back so fast run boots would be necessary.