blades vs. javelins

[protoshoggoth]

Yes, I gave up on the javelins. Having delusions of melee, I dumped some skill points into claw mastery--which quickly made the javelins start to look pretty damn silly by comparison.

At some point, when I acquire a nice unique (or runewordable) maul or the like, I'll look into using it. For now, though, I'm still Blade Fury-ing with my claws (just cubed up a rare scissors quhab, 78 avg dmg, +24 fire, + a bit of cold, + 6% mana steal).

So far the quhab is better than the best maul I've shopped, a cruel great maul of incineration. I'm only in act 3 NM (no, I've not been playing very much).

I also fooled around a bit with some greater talons with knockback. The BF transmits the knockback, of course, but so far it hasn't really been necessary. It appears the 5% chance to cast amp damage on striking property does not work through BF.