Effective Amazon Build

[Crystalion]

Thecla said:

physical damage was effectively nerfed in 1.10

and JustAGuy said:

the Amazon has gotten the ol' shaft from the patch. Same goes for any melee build, really.

Well, as a theoretician I have to disagree almost completely.

Please note that we aren't discussing the importance of Crowd Control or issues of survivability. This is purely a comment focused on v1.10 vs v1.09 physical damage (actually any version with 50% global hell physical).

There are fewer phys immunes now. Anything that isn't phys immune is utterly owned, phys resistwise, by ampdamage or even decrep.

Yes, they bumped the HPs of the monsters. Crushing blow doesn't care (and works ranged, albeit at half effectiveness, and vs. bosses, ditto).

Yes the monster increased HPs is also horrific vis a vis regen... stop the regen! (PMH, OW, poison). You have many options here. But you ignore this issue at your peril. (creepy background music goes here ;) )

Physical damage is king in v1.10

--Ferengi; this is a way of summing this up. This situation is why thev 1.10 necro skelie armies *work* in hell difficulty (their longevity would not matter, if their physical damage, supported by ampdam to break immunes to 80%, wasn't effective).

Furthermore, Lifetap now works ranged. (indeed for ranged *throwing* weapons, it appears bugged--ymmv--in the player's favor). Lifetap doesn't care about the nm/hell or monster leech nerfs. Only high physical resistance messes with the uberness of Lifetap for melee/ranged characters.

Perhaps the client/server desync mess-ups (WW, Zeal, Fury, etc.) have obscured this new reality, or perhaps players are too "young" to remember that major adjustments are required for builds/equip when new versions come out (like when my iceblink Paly was nerfed to hell, long long ago--not that he didn't deserve nerfing :D )

edit: now that I've edited the hell out of this to fix the forum weirdness with quoting, I should add that I understand that v1.10 is "tougher", in that it still takes more physical damage output to kill monsters. But you can get it with better weapons and better skills (synergized or otherwise improved) in many cases. Builds that don't rely on Physical damage are, imo, far more likely to run into uncrackable monsters (except, perhaps, Paladins, with Conviction, Vengence, Sanctuary and Blessed Hammer tricks to defeat immunes). It should be noted here that lots of the "common" physical immunes have very low HPs, so zon, assassin, barb, paly phys=>elemental skills should do the trick quite well... this leaves phys fury druids out in the cold, but they *could* have done a little fire claws, rabies, armageddon, etc., if they really object to having an elemental weapon handy).