Faith, Chains of Honour or Grief? Which would give me most bang for my buck?

Howdy all,

Been playing on and off since D2 came out, 20+ years... sigh... and am trying to get together the 3 rune words above. Been trying to accumulate the runes to get at least one but basically when I make one it's gonna take ages to get the runes etc to craft the next one so which one would be of utmost importance? Have up to

Ohm and multiple

Ist but I still have a bit to go. I play a Strafazon with an Act 5 merc. Quite capable together, Hell runs are mostly trouble free... mostly... but where should my focus be? My first thoughts are to get Faith sorted, then Chains and then Grief.

Anybody have any thoughts? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I don't know how is your account today, what runewords you have actually? Example: You have CTA already? if not, in my opinion is first priority to use an

Ohm rune. I would focus first in Grief, costs a

Lo rune, then Chains of Honor, any char that doesn't need Enigma will make excelent use. Faith is the most expensive runeword, is used in specific builds. I would make Faith after already have Enigma, Exile and CTA.

The order I would do is:

1- Grief
2 - COH
3 - Faith

My guess Faith if you need more offense.
Chains of Honor if you need more defense (if you still too low on resistances and dying - or almost - too much, but still can kill things fast enough)

You may test the difference in some calculator
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/


About Grief, it is not normally used with Act 5 Merc (never saw a guide recommending...)
Raw damage setups use

Headstriker (eth and upgraded)
And most people use some utility setup (like Last Wish, Lawbringer or Plague - this for elemental/poison builds)

Probably would be better to use Act 2 Merc (for Might) with Pride or

The Reaper's Toll.

Good call from @Alexandre_Souza.
Depending on your current build (and armor), Call To Arms can be better for survival than Chains of Honor

In my opinion, there is no "priority" ranking for runewords.

You should make runewords according to your NEEDS, to fill important gaps (resistances are top priority for all builds, but a bowazon can offset with huge leech) or strenghten your offense ability (this is why Infinity is one of the most used merc runewords). All of this is dependent on your actual class/build and gear ONLY.

For example, I have 20 heroes, and never used Chains of Honor. In some cases, cheap runewords outperform expensive ones. Treachery/Hustle MAY be a better choice than Fortitude or CoH.

For your strafezon... Faith is top 3 priority if you DON'T have a

Windforce. The damage increase over all other bows is immense. The

Windforce is quite equal in terms of raw damage and dirt-cheap compared to Faith!

Faith excels in additional features like Ignore Target Defense, skill bonus, Attack Rating, Resistances and is therefore considered best-in-slot.

Also make sure you have a good base at hand before spending this expensive

Jah rune! Don't make Faith in any other bow than a +3 skills

Grand Matron Bow. If you want the best possible, aim for a superior bow with at least +10% damage. It can take a while until you get such one.

For your merc: There are several options, but Grief isn't a good one. Act 2 might merc wielding

The Reaper's Toll is always a fine thing for physical builds. Pride also. Act 5 merc rocking dual Last Wish is fun and makes a very fast and tanky companion, but it's just too expensive.

You need to cover physical immunes, and theres only a few ways to deal with:

Atma's Scarab for self use, Lawbringer for barb merc, Brand as your second weapon or for an act 1 merc and the mentioned Reapers.

Could you please list your gear and tell us which areas you want to play with the Amazon?

Already got some ideas and I thank everyone for their ideas, but for those asking as to my gear... my strafazon has a

Windforce, with upgraded Buriza as alternate weapon, upgraded Skullduggers for the MF,

Laying of Hands,

Atma's Scarab, Gore Riders,

Tal Rashas crest and

Nosferatu's Coil, with Bul Kathos and

Raven Frost in ring slots.

My merc has Fortitude, Delerium and Lawbringer

Phase Blade.

In an ideal world I would equip the Grief on him and keep Chains and Faith for my character. The Chains of Honour would be good for my resistances, hence it being on my wish list. I only really struggle with lightning resistance, especially in Worldstone Keep. Everything else is not bad, just not as kick ass as I would like.

At the moment I'm trying to get as many runes as I can so

The Countess gets lots of visits. Likewise The Pits,

Mephisto and

Baal.

I only use the term "priority" because whatever high rune I use to make one of the recipes will drain my rune budget for a while, if that makes sense. Not like I'm gonna stumble across a

Jah a

Ber and a

Lo in the next week or so.

Trust that all makes sense.

As you don't need/want Enigma, maybe Fortitude (and some resist charms) gives you more overall damage and same resists over Chains of Honor + some max charms

Fortitude is a very good option for a strafezon.

But....

Windforce needs a lot if IAS. I would aim for at least 80 IAS.

For 2 fpa you need 120 IAS! Afaik this is impossible without Treachery, Hustle or a 4x IAS jeweled blue armor.

Edit: It is possible, but not easy to achieve: Gloves 20, Shael'ed WF 40, 3x IAS'ed Helm 45 and Highlords or Cats 20 IAS. But no Atma's then...

If you want to use a Faith merc, 40 IAS is the sweet spot.

Big Oddy wrote: 3 weeks ago

Already got some ideas and I thank everyone for their ideas, but for those asking as to my gear... my strafazon has a

Windforce, with upgraded Buriza as alternate weapon, upgraded Skullduggers for the MF,

Laying of Hands,

Atma's Scarab, Gore Riders,

Tal Rashas crest and

Nosferatu's Coil, with Bul Kathos and

Raven Frost in ring slots.

My merc has Fortitude, Delerium and Lawbringer

Phase Blade.

In an ideal world I would equip the Grief on him and keep Chains and Faith for my character. The Chains of Honour would be good for my resistances, hence it being on my wish list. I only really struggle with lightning resistance, especially in Worldstone Keep. Everything else is not bad, just not as kick ass as I would like.

At the moment I'm trying to get as many runes as I can so

The Countess gets lots of visits. Likewise The Pits,

Mephisto and

Baal.

I only use the term "priority" because whatever high rune I use to make one of the recipes will drain my rune budget for a while, if that makes sense. Not like I'm gonna stumble across a

Jah a

Ber and a

Lo in the next week or so.

Trust that all makes sense.

Your strafezon is well equiped already! Now I know better your context, maybe I can help you better. I suggest you pass your Fortitude for your amazon, only in case is made in non-ethereal base. Your act 5 merc can use Treachery, Duress ou

Duriel's Shell instead. As you are focused in get runes, you can go also in

Chaos Sanctuary and cow level farm these runes.

The Countess generally drops only until

Ist rune. Since you are using an act 5 merc, I suggest changing his

Helm to more suitable options for him, such as vamipre gaze,

Andariel's Visage or

Arreat's Face. Delirium is more suitable for act 1 merc. I hope I could help you! Regards! Great farming!

While

The Countess' "special rune drop" goes up to

Ist, because of the odds, some people use her to farm only up to

Lem (sometimes lower...)

If you play online and trade, trading things for runes (crafting material, lower runes and "on demand" bases / unique /sets for example) is generally way faster/efficient than try to actually drop high runes...
(never dropped a

Jah and only two

Ber for example, but get a bunch of them via trades )

Alexandre_Souza wrote: 3 weeks ago

The Countess generally drops only until

Ist rune.

"While

The Countess' "special rune drop" goes up to

Ist, because of the odds, some people use her to farm only up to

Lem (sometimes lower...)"

The odds really suck.
I've been doing about 40 countess runs in last 2 weeks, and the highest rune i got from countess was a

Hel...
3

Amn at once was the absolute best drop by far.

So yeah, relatively easy to get runes there, but not good ones.

I'm going to make a suggestion that I know you didn't ask for. Have you tried using an upped

Witchwild String? Or at least on swap? It comes with ctc amp dmg, 40 all res, CRAZY high deadly strike, and 2 sockets. This bow can easily free up your amulet and armor slot. You can use Fortitude for even more dmg and res and mara's for even more res. Coh gives you 65 res. Anti perfect fort and mara plus WWS will give you 85 all res.
I have a strafezon with an act 1 merc. That merc uses Faith and when I use WF or WWS I kill everything just as fast. Its a super fun and very cheap alternative to the WF/Faith argument. I also get it's not the 'cool' choice.

Knappogue wrote: 3 weeks ago

I'm going to make a suggestion that I know you didn't ask for. Have you tried using an upped

Witchwild String? Or at least on swap? It comes with ctc amp dmg, 40 all res, CRAZY high deadly strike, and 2 sockets. This bow can easily free up your amulet and armor slot. You can use Fortitude for even more dmg and res and mara's for even more res. Coh gives you 65 res. Anti perfect fort and mara plus WWS will give you 85 all res.
I have a strafezon with an act 1 merc. That merc uses Faith and when I use WF or WWS I kill everything just as fast. Its a super fun and very cheap alternative to the WF/Faith argument. I also get it's not the 'cool' choice.

Funny you say that as I finally got a Witchwild yesterday. So you suggest upping the Witchwild via the cube? And what would you recommend in the sockets? I need to do all the maths but thank you for your suggestion. Was a well timed one indeed.

Yea, up in the cube.

Your goal is 86IAS. You'll get 40 from gloves and highlords. So you can socket a

Shael and 15IAS with good prefix in your bow. That'll give you 75IAS total so far. Then you can socket another 15IAS jewel with useful prefix into your

Helm, to give you 90IAS.

Edit: If you don't have highlords you can use cats eye to get the 20IAS. With this set up you can replace nosferatu's for

Razortail to get that 100%

Pierce.