Seeking advice for a spear/poison zon

[Abobo]

Seeking advice for a spear/poison zon

Hi everyone. I am looking for a change of pace in play style and I am toying with the idea of making a mainly lightning-melee based Amazon with plague javelin as a topping off skill to toss in mobs and let it work while my merc and I go toe to toe. I don't have any special goals in mind with the build, my only aim is to walk all hell areas and have fun. My rough draft of skills will be something like:

Jav & Spear
1 Jab
1 - 20 Power Strike
1 Poison Jav
1 Lightning Bolt
20 Charged Strike
20 Plague Jav
20 Lightning Strike

By using a skill calculator, I see that Plague will do ~2k at lvl 20 without + skills, synergies, and + poison skill damage. I plan to use at least Trang gloves to boost the damage and at least + 8 to all skills. Will I need Poison Jav to be able to do supplementary damage to monsters in hell with plague Jav?

Also, I see that Power Strike does a lot more damage than Charged or Lightning Strike, yet I see in these forums that Charged is the way to go when I go up close and personal. I would appreciate it if someone could give me some advice regarding the three melee lightning skills.

Passive
1 Critical
1 Inner Sight
1 Slow Missile
1 Decoy
1 Penetrate(maybe)

I did not include Dodge/Evade/Avoid in the passive tree because I have read that they can be buggy and interfere with melee attacks. Would it be a good idea to get these skills?

I pretty much know what types of items I will use. I would just like some insight on the points that I made above and would love advice from someone that knows more than I do. :grin:

PS - I am a new forum member so I would like to extend greetings to the community. I've been lurking for two to three weeks and finally stopped being lazy and signed up. Lot of great articles in this forum and the others!

 

[Kijya]

Re: Seeking advice for a spear/poison zon

By using a skill calculator, I see that Plague will do ~2k at lvl 20 without + skills, synergies, and + poison skill damage. I plan to use at least Trang gloves to boost the damage and at least + 8 to all skills. Will I need Poison Jav to be able to do supplementary damage to monsters in hell with plague Jav?

Even maxed out poison skills do not kill "fast" in any way in hell, unsynergized ones should preform rather bad if you ask me.

Also, I see that Power Strike does a lot more damage than Charged or Lightning Strike, yet I see in these forums that Charged is the way to go when I go up close and personal. I would appreciate it if someone could give me some advice regarding the three melee lightning skills.

Charged strike does its listed damage per bolt, and it casts several bolts, unlike power strike which only deals its damage to one enemy once. High level charged strike on high end javazons can do above 100k damage per attack, something powerstrike is far from able to compete with. Lightning strike casts a chain lightning, the first target might not be hit with as much damage as if you had used power strike, but if you hit 30+ nearby targets the damage piles up.

I did not include Dodge/Evade/Avoid in the passive tree because I have read that they can be buggy and interfere with melee attacks. Would it be a good idea to get these skills?

They can interrupt you attack once triggered, but the short duration attacks don't really suffer much because of d/a/e. Though since you need the skillpoints for your java skill, I'd not level dae more then 1 point personally.

I pretty much know what types of items I will use. I would just like some insight on the points that I made above and would love advice from someone that knows more than I do.

Just standard java equipment I'd assume, though have a look at the guides that include usage of the poison skills.

PS - I am a new forum member so I would like to extend greetings to the community. I've been lurking for two to three weeks and finally stopped being lazy and signed up. Lot of great articles in this forum and the others!

Welcome, make sure to put a chain on your wallet and wear your pants with a tight belt on :wave:

 

[Abobo]

Re: Seeking advice for a spear/poison zon

I appreciate the advice. It was very helpful and it answered my questions about the melee lightning skills. About the posion skills, I don't want them to kill, just to slowly weaken enemies while my team and I takes them out toe to toe.

I guess the only thing I need to decide now is to max Power Strike for more lightning damage, or Poison jav for more damage over time.

Thanks again on the ideas and as a side note, I don't wear pants, they just slow me down. I love the weird look of a belt with no pants on though. :grin:

 

[WrongdayJ]

Re: Seeking advice for a spear/poison zon

Welcome to the Forums! :wave:

If you are looking to use Poison only to halt regeneration and slowly weaken your enemies, then any poison augmentation will do, not just from a skill.

One of my favorite things to do is to stack several high damage, high duration sources (charms, Perfect Emeralds, Tal Runes, etc.). That way you get the benfits of poison, over a relatively long time (10 sec. or more usually) without having to spend valuable skill points to accomplish this end.

I 100% agree with Kijya- If you aren't going with a full-tilt poison jav build (both skills maxed with help from equipment), then you're better off using the skill points for the Lightning synergies and using other poison augmentation.

As for D/A/E. . .well. . .I like to put a point or two in them. Not any more than that though. It's really up to you- I've seen some killer builds that don't put any points in them, and I've seen some killer builds with the points in them. Either way, it's all good.

BTW- not wearing pants around here (while comfy) is kinda risky. . .ya know? One stop to tie your shoes and, well, you'll wish you had the shields up.

 

[IntellectSucks]

Re: Seeking advice for a spear/poison zon

I just started a spearazon as well (2 handed all the way baby). I was thinking of maxing all the lightning skills and pouring the rest into valk. Any advice about stuff I haven't thought of?

Also, this build is SO FREAKIN HARD at low levels untwinked. I bought a 5% life leach spear and was getting owned so bad until I broke down and transfered over sigons and cathans from another char. Anything that was cold enchanted meant a quick death and most cursed uniques really put a hurt on me too. I'm hoping this isn't a prelude of things to come.