Charge!

[mephiztophelez]

a few points Gandalf....

1: your minimum damage is 1/3'rd of mine (i have 100% deadly strike), so your 7k vs my 22k (before factoring in PvP penalties etc)
2: because you dumped so much into strength, you have ~500 less life than me (which would blow out to well over 1k if i had top end charms on my charger, which i don't)
3: i'll grant you that the -25% target defence is a very nice mod to have.
4: not everyone is prepared to use duped runes. an e-Death requires merely 3x Gul runes while finding or cubing up a Zod rune is either unlikely (finding) or painful (cubing).
5: you havn't factored in Crushing Blow damage. an e-Death build will probably hit 100% CB, while an ebotd build won't. CB on that first hit is a very nice wodge of damage against high life opponents like Druids and Hammerdins.

all that said, yes you can most definatly get One Hit Kills with an eBotD thunder maul or war pike.

both will work. i just prefer the e-Death. it's a lot cheaper (which fits the theme of my build perfectly. i threw it together from scraps i had gathering e-Dust on mules)

edit: here is an example of where 2h chargers really excel: taking out auto-tp, hacked up the wazoo hammerdins.

seeing as i have never used any form of hack in my life (and never will), i really enjoy instagibbing the BM hacktards that seem to infest battlenet.

while we're on the topic, TC-Ogre from that game volunteered for a little damage testing. 7.3k PvP damage good enough for yah? after these, he put some more %DR on and my best hit was still over 5.5k.

[GandalfTheGhey]

a few points Gandalf....

1: your minimum damage is 1/3'rd of mine (i have 100% deadly strike), so your 7k vs my 22k (before factoring in PvP penalties etc)

Not sure what your point is here. 22k still won't 1 hit-kill most players if they have half-way decent DR and Battle Orders.

It's all about the average damage, and as I proved with my numbers, EBOTD thunder maul is very close to Eth Death Decap.

Not saying its better, but it's a viable alternative.

2: because you dumped so much into strength, you have ~500 less life than me (which would blow out to well over 1k if i had top end charms on my charger, which i don't)

I have high end charms on my charger and I doubt if you could get 1000 more life with less strength.

You might get 700 more after BO by my calculations. I doubt if it will extend the battle long enough to let you win.

I'd rather up my chances of a 1 hit kill then pump more life.

4: not everyone is prepared to use duped runes. an e-Death requires merely 3x Gul runes while finding or cubing up a Zod rune is either unlikely (finding) or painful (cubing).

To me, this is not a factor when theorizing the most efficient build. If you have access to BOTD it should be considered.

5: you havn't factored in Crushing Blow damage. an e-Death build will probably hit 100% CB, while an ebotd build won't. CB on that first hit is a very nice wodge of damage against high life opponents like Druids and Hammerdins.

Well It's hard to calculate the difference 100% CB would make vs 60% CB in pvp, so I left it out. True it's an advantage, though I am not sure by how much.

seeing as i have never used any form of hack in my life (and never will), i really enjoy instagibbing the BM hacktards that seem to infest battlenet.

That battle was lost quite a while back I'm afraid

[UberB]

a few points Gandalf....

2: because you dumped so much into strength, you have ~500 less life than me (which would blow out to well over 1k if i had top end charms on my charger, which i don't)

Where are you getting this from?

Decapitator strength requirement is 189.
An eth decapitator requires 179 strength.
Factor in the Hel rune = 143 strength

Thunder maul strength requirement is 253.
Eth Thunder maul requires 243 strength.
Factor in the Hel rune = 194 strength.

Factor in the +30 attributes from botd (effectively only 30 vitality), and a death user only has 31 extra points in vitality. This is equivalent to 93 life, perhaps 150-200 life after BO. Nowhere near 1k.

[mephiztophelez]

Where are you getting this from?

<snip>

Factor in the +30 attributes from botd (effectively only 30 vitality), and a death user only has 31 extra points in vitality. This is equivalent to 93 life, perhaps 150-200 life after BO. Nowhere near 1k.

mostly, it's coming directly from the fact that, by and large, my chargers charms are pretty ghetto.

with a full suite of 3/20/20's, i'd have around 700+ more life than i currently do.

[drake]

An eth decapitator requires 179 strength.
Factor in the Hel rune = 143 strength

Eth Thunder maul requires 243 strength.
Factor in the Hel rune = 194 strength

Factor in the +30 attributes from botd (effectively only 30 vitality), and a death user only has 31 extra points in vitality. This is equivalent to 93 life, perhaps 150-200 life after BO. Nowhere near 1k.

you're forgetting that +vit isnt boable.

theres a difference of 194-143 = 61 str. thats 183 life before bo. after a 7 bo/+53% life (which is roughly what a typical charger gets) thats 280 life.

the +30 vit = 90 unboable life. 280 - 90 = 190 life.

indeed thats not much, but why the hell would you use a botd tmaul anyway... its got almost everything going against it: average dmg, min dmg, life. imo max dmg is a lot less important than avg or min, unless you take great pride in the max dmg that shows up on your char screen or in doing the occasional huge hit. a tmaul also has less range than a glorious axe, should you decide to use that for death.

also, the calculations i've seen are flawed because the max dmg from charms wasnt factored in (most chargers will/should have a lot of +max...). more DS with death means those charms will be make more damage overall (especially when u consider the insane ed% of charge), which makes the gap between edeath and botd bigger than those calculations made it out to be.

anyway, nice guide meph!

[mephiztophelez]

also, the calculations i've seen are flawed because the max dmg from charms wasnt factored in (most chargers will/should have a lot of +max...).

ideally, yes, load up on max/ar/life charms.

however: you don't "need" them, not in the way a BvB, BvC or Zealot "needs"
+max charms. they're nice, they add to damage, but they are expensive and problematic to hang onto (i've had that many bloody max/ar/life sc's go pop on me).

a charger can be built for cheap and use plain 20 life scs and still OHK most opponents.

use 'em if you've got 'em, but don't overly stress about 'em.

anyway, nice guide meph!

cheers mate. glad you liked it.

[drake]

on this charm thing, after playing my charger for a while i started to have this feeling that AR charms could potentially be better than max/ar, especially if you put your spares points in blessed aim and use it every once in a while.

because, having max/ar charms or not wont change a thing in practice most of the time. if you typically kill a specific opponent in two hits, you will still kill him in two hits without max from charms most of the time, because charge has so much dmg that a lot of it is just wasted in "overkilling" your opponent anyway. AR charms ensure that you need less tries to get those two hits, which i think can win you more duels than having say 27k instead of 30k damage... especially vs high def opponents which happen to be the charger's worst enemies: smiters, hammers, barbs.

i've been too lazy to bother switching my charmset though so i cant comment further :P

[mephiztophelez]

you could well be right. i just use ghetto charms that are hand-me-downs from other characters.

if i really, really need insane AR, i'll throw on Angelics and use a demonlimb. but most of the opponents you need this for are pretty tough duels for a charger anyways (barbs and smiters mostly).

hammerdins actually aren't that hard and you don't "need" crazy AR to hit them anyways. that's if you can nail 'em mid charge when their block and defence drops through the s-bend.

in all honesty, this kind of character is just a fun, muck around character. i personally wouldn't sink a lot of e-wealth into it, you can have pretty good success with pretty ghetto gear.

[drake]

i personally wouldn't sink a lot of e-wealth into it, you can have pretty good success with pretty ghetto gear.

yeah, and AR charms are cheaper than max/AR. win/win!

[mephiztophelez]

i'd choose charms based on the following mods:

1: LIFE!!!!

2: AR

3: +Max.

i'd use plain lifers before using plain AR charms.