Phage's Javazon Guide

[Grimborn]

Phage's definitive Javazon Guide is now available for on-line viewing. It's here.

[Occhidiangela]

1. On this point about Charged Strike, are you sure?

Charged Strike (prereq: Power Strike, Poison Javelin, Lightning Bolt)
Keeping with the theme of this branch of the skill tree, this is another Lightning-based attack. This time, you add lightning damage to your attack (more powerful than Power Strike, naturally) but you also release charged bolts. I don’t know how much damage these Charged Bolts deal, but they seem pretty weak. Oh, and you can only release 3 of them with one prod. No, this does not increase with slvl. Oh well, at least this skill is auto hit.

Mana Cost = 4 + (slvl - 1) x 0.25
Lightning Damage: (1 to 30) + (slvl - 1) x 10 + round down((slvl-1)/8) x 2
(increasing returns kick in at slvls multiples of 8) 

For 8.7 mana, slvl-20 Charged Strike adds 223-252 lightning damage to your weapon in addition to releasing three charged bolts of undetermined damage
. . . I still prefer my Shocking Throwing Spear. .

I basically agree with your preference of that Shocking Throwing Spear with Jab, on mana per damage, but maybe we both are looking at this askance.

I just reviewed Sirian's discussion of Lytra, the CS Amazon. I looked at ChippyDips skill trees, and it seems to me that the damage is per bolt, for three bolts. I realize that Sirian did his tests pre LoD, and cannot remember if the mechanics of Charged Strike actually changed during the beta, as I did not test that skill. I had meant to, but I had to leave the beta mid way through. At level 1, CS does 1-30, which I take to mean 1-30 per bolt. Hence, I infer, and I may have incorrectly interpreted this, that the per bolt damage is what is listed. Level 20 yields 223-252 per bolt . . . I think. Now, against a Physically Immune monster, you add that to your friencdly Shocking Throwing Spear, and your Lightning Damage is fairly Tidy. :) Yes, yes, it pales in comparison to Lightning Fury, I know. :) But, Sirian's comment was interesting:

When you HIT with your physical attack, all three bolts are applied instantly to that target.

Did you test Charge Strike in that regard, or has someone actually deciphered the damage application, be it per bolt or an aggregate? I have not, as yet, but may. :) Your guide seems to have given it short shrift, however, I may have missed a thread or two at the basin that discussed the details of this skill's mechanics.

2. Crushing Blow.

Crushing Blow. This is one of the sweetest ancillary effects you can get. Crushing Blow works as a chance to reduce your enemies' life by ½. Physical Resistance lowers this powerful effect, so non-PI Hell monsters will have their HP reduced by ¼ instead, and physical immunes are outright immune. CB plus a quick jab or fend can quickly reduce a monster's life, no matter how much HP it may have. Think of it like the melee Static Field. Crushing Blow is halved again on bows and throwing items (including LF). The effect is not carried on to secondary LF bolts.

You might want to update the CB discussion to reflect the LoD change. One quarter remaining damage, versus one half, and the differences between boss and normal monsters. I still like Crushing Blow in big games, it speeds up the Fend Them To Death process. As I recall, Spirea covers this at his site. :)

3. Love your IAS tables. Nice and easy to understand. :)

4. IIRC, Extra Strong boosts damage by 2X, not 3X.

Extra Strong multiplies the physical damage output of the monster by 3, and increases its AR by 25%. An Extra Strong monster hits very hard, especially if it has high physical damage to begin with. The physical damage modification applies to the base damage. Why this is so important is going to be obvious.

That detail was raised a few months back when we discussed Rahl's Hardcore Guide. He used the same 3X multiplier. :)

You put in a heck of a lot of work, nice job! :)

[Ruvanal]

Occhidiangela, many of your questions on the Charged strike are answered in this thread.
http://www.theamazonbasin.com/d2/forums/in...ST&f=39&t=24617

The bolts that are released have a damage of 2-4 +(slvl-1)*2. So yes, they are wimpy compared to the lightning on that is added to the spear itself.

[Occhidiangela]

I suspected that The Basin had seen such a discussion, I just don't get over there as often as I should to browse. :)

This paragraph is where your reasoning is in error and why this skill is not actually used much. There is a bug in the way the damage for the skill is set up. While the screen description would show each of the 3 charged bolts as doing 223-252 damage each at skill level 20; due to the bug with the skill these charged bolts are actually only doing 40-42 lightning damage each at skill level 20. This is what makes this skill useless in v1.09.

Appreciate the enlightenment. :)

[mageofthesands]

Links dead.

[Phage]

Any dead links to the AB website should've been temporary :)

Thanks for the kind words. I just registered here to see what happened to Grimborn's post :) Right now I just want to say that I haven't played this game for a while, but I'm going to make an effort to update this to version 2 for the 1.10 patch. So in effect, I'm hoping to have two versions going on:

v1.2 for 1.09 patch
v2.0 (or later) for 1.10 patch

This is another alternate link in case the first one ever goes dead. This is how I formatted the thing originally. Credits to Losc for hosting this one.

So, Charged Strike is now a killer, huh? Gotta get a Javazon going again and test it myself ;)