The Cranium Basher...thoughts?

I just found a Cranium Basher. It's my first time seeing this weapon, and I'm impressed with its whopping 75% chance of crushing blow and a nice +25 to all resists. However, its damage is kind of low compared to similar weapon choices (like my BotD) and it requires over 250 Str! I can't even wear that with my Fury druid with the +30 to all attributes from my current weapon. It seems like this weapon could be good for uber runs (I'd have 100% crushing blow), but I'd have to socket it with a Hel rune to even use it.

Anyone ever used this item? If so, what are your thoughts? Is it worth using?

It’s certainly a lot of strength, and it’s also a bit slow - with level 30 Werewolf and a level 12 Fanaticism aura (from a Faith bow act 1 merc) you’d need 109 IAS to reach the max breakpoint for Fury: Skill (72 for the second highest breakpoint, which only loses you 1 frame in total on a complete Fury: Skill attack sequence). Of course if you use Mark of the Bear from Metamorphosis and/or Burst of Speed from Hustle it’s easier, but depending on your intended gear you might need to swap around gear specifically for prebuffing. This link is prefilled with these numbers, you can adjust accordingly:
attackspeed.php?char=Druid&data=3-2-Thu ... -0-0-0-0-0

But I mean, it could work. I encourage you to play around with maxroll’s skill & gear planner. And remember to double check IAS calculations with the IAS calculator here (see the above link).

Yeah, I'm thinking I'll need to just make a clone of myself in the hero editor and test the weapon out to see if it is worth using my last socket quest on it, just for uber runs.

Cranium Basher - that brings backs memories to the Warcraft 3 map "DOTA" (today most will probably better be familiar with League of Legends)

There was a weapon Cranium Basher - gave your attack " Bash", which was quite usefull for fast-attacking heroes.

Anybody else remembers Dota?

WedgeAntilles wrote: 7 months ago

that brings backs memories to the Warcraft 3 map "DOTA"

Omg, played a lot with friends in LAN and online.

hitechhobo wrote: 7 months ago

I just found a Cranium Basher. It's my first time seeing this weapon, and I'm impressed with its whopping 75% chance of crushing blow and a nice +25 to all resists. However, its damage is kind of low compared to similar weapon choices (like my BotD) and it requires over 250 Str! I can't even wear that with my Fury druid with the +30 to all attributes from my current weapon. It seems like this weapon could be good for uber runs (I'd have 100% crushing blow), but I'd have to socket it with a Hel rune to even use it.

Anyone ever used this item? If so, what are your thoughts? Is it worth using?

Regarding crushing blow, i'm going to give you my opinion: you don't need anything near 100% CB.

I made a calculator once to seek the "optimum CB amount" and, in my calculations, it was around 30~40% max.

CB have some super diminishing returns, and even on uber runs i don't go anywhere over 40%.

IMHO melee in D2R in a nutshell: stack tons of increase attack speed, Prevent Monster Heal and 40% crushing blow max. Everything else is +life and +resistances.

luizgeo wrote: 7 months ago

hitechhobo wrote: 7 months ago

I just found a Cranium Basher. It's my first time seeing this weapon, and I'm impressed with its whopping 75% chance of crushing blow and a nice +25 to all resists. However, its damage is kind of low compared to similar weapon choices (like my BotD) and it requires over 250 Str! I can't even wear that with my Fury druid with the +30 to all attributes from my current weapon. It seems like this weapon could be good for uber runs (I'd have 100% crushing blow), but I'd have to socket it with a Hel rune to even use it.

Anyone ever used this item? If so, what are your thoughts? Is it worth using?

Regarding crushing blow, i'm going to give you my opinion: you don't need anything near 100% CB.

I made a calculator once to seek the "optimum CB amount" and, in my calculations, it was around 30~40% max.

CB have some super diminishing returns, and even on uber runs i don't go anywhere over 40%.

IMHO melee in D2R in a nutshell: stack tons of increase attack speed, Prevent Monster Heal and 40% crushing blow max. Everything else is +life and +resistances.

I remember even back in LOD we didn't really go over 40%. There's just no point.

100% crushing blow is unnecessary, for Ubers or anything else.

I do Ubers all the time with 50% CB just from Gface and Gore Rider and it gets the job done great.

this item is very good item for Iron Golem creation. difficulty part is hard to get, if you use this, it will need like 3 per hour as non-nec player.

Thanks for your feedback. It seems to verify what I've already noticed.

In my experience, crushing blow is good but can be overrated. When I first started playing D2R about a month ago, and didn't have good gear, I found an IK Maul with perfect (40%) crushing blow. I socketed it with 2x Shael. It was the best I had at the time, but even with the super-fast attack speed and 40% crushing blow, I still had trouble clearing monsters and taking down bosses.

Having a high damage output weapon was better in my experience than a lower dmg but higher crushing blow.