Smiter + Lacerator

Hello
I have a smiter and it works rather well (Grief / CtA)
I have found a Lacerator and I've read somewhere (cant remember where) that it could be usefull but not sure how to use it.
Could someone explain ?

Probably the thinking is that Lacerator has open wounds. If you have that on gore riders or a Belt or something I'm not sure what Lacerator does for you. Maybe amp damage? But you want Life Tap.

Yes, Lacerator is useful for some $$ from Charsi to buy new potions or tp.

LOL Sorry, I'm not sure what could be the use, but I also read somewhere it can be good, maybe Eth with Zod for more dmg?

Mod : gentle warning - if you don't know, don't jump in to say wrong stuff.

Lacerator can have uses as stated below, and you cannot socket throwing weapons.

Lots of mistakes in two short sentences.

Open wounds and Amplify Damage (33% chance is massive) I would guess.
But I rather stick to my Last Wish Phaseblade and Dracul's Gloves - Life Tap for the win.

Throwing weapons can't have sockets, unfortunately.

Lacerator is used for its high chance of Amplify Damage, but as others have stated, Life Tap is what you want.

Life Tap with dracul
so would need to switch to Lacerator for Amplify Damage and then switch to Grief (and do it again after 14s at the end of Amplify Damage)?

As already pointed out, there are two ways to use Lacerator as a Smiter, in both cases you have it as a throw weapon on switch.

1. Open wounds (unless you have a source for open source on the rest of your gear): Throw it on the enemy to cast open wounds, the Smite them.

2. Amplify Damage: This makes sense to break Physical immunities / bring down physical resistances against sundered enemies. Same as above, Lacerator on switch, throw to cast, then Smite the enemies.

Both cases are "solutions" for "problems" that a fully geared über Smiter doesn't have, because

1. Open wounds you get from e.g. Gore Rider.

2. Smiters should not farm and if they were, they should not farm areas with physical immunes, and if they were, they should come with a The Reaper's Toll'ed A2 Merc.

Dracul's Grasp has Life Tap and 25% open wounds
so should keep my switch (Call To Arms) rather than Lacerator, if I follow you all well?

klmklm27 wrote: 3 weeks ago

Dracul's Grasp has Life Tap and 25% open wounds
so should keep my switch (Call To Arms) rather than Lacerator, if I follow you all well?

Correct.

Some people used Lacerator as swap (after BC BO) for Uber Trist speedrun.
No Life Tap because you want speed.

klmklm27 wrote: 3 weeks ago

Dracul's Grasp has Life Tap and 25% open wounds
so should keep my switch (Call To Arms) rather than Lacerator, if I follow you all well?

That's what I would do because CtA will give you a boost to life that will be helpful for absorbing big hits, Life Tap will take care of the rest. However, if for some reason you don't have dracs, you can run gore riders for the open wounds and go Life Tap Wand on switch.

tested on Hell Baal
seems faster to finish him : Lacerator to cast Amplify Damage then switch to Grief for the fixed dmg (only a feeling though)

Casting Decrepify or Amplify Damage is better than Life Tap - for pure damage output. Your crushing blow damage suffers physical resistance (so it is halved vs 50% resistant mobs). On the other hand crushing blow damage cannot be increased by negative resistance so Amplify Damage is only better than Decrepify for the non-CB damage output.

My ladder smiters typically never use Life Tap vs dclone once they have Grief. I still stick to Life Tap in Uber Tristram and Colossal Summit for the much needed additional survivability.

ShadowHeart wrote: 3 weeks ago

Casting Decrepify or Amplify Damage is better than Life Tap - for pure damage output. Your crushing blow damage suffers physical resistance (so it is halved vs 50% resistant mobs). On the other hand crushing blow damage cannot be increased by negative resistance so Amplify Damage is only better than Decrepify for the non-CB damage output.

My ladder smiters typically never use Life Tap vs dclone once they have Grief. I still stick to Life Tap in Uber Tristram and Colossal Summit for the much needed additional survivability.

Fastest uber run uses Amplify Damage (from Atmas?) as well. And a Phase Blade with 4 Ber and 2 Shael iirc.

Caring about speed running Ubers with a smiter is so incredibly niche though. I've gotta imagine it's still slower than a Javazon and even without Amp using fairly standard/mid Smite Tristram only takes a few minutes and Andy/ Izual search time is the main factor. Trading/gathering keys will take you exponentially longer

Lacerator is overall better for Double Throw barb and some other builds. Chance to proc Amplify Damage and more importantly Prevent Monster Heal is the reason to consider putting it on swap for Uber hunter to speed things up. This is a hyper optimization and not actually needed at all. Kind of like how you do not need Grief but you definitely want one!

• Tag, you're it!
• Swap & Smite
• Repeat

Source: Tuesday Torch runs once upon a time. If you are going through 12 mules in one day almost every week you might as well save some time!

P.S. Cannot Be Frozen is more important than Vitality which is more important than Life Tap. There are budget options for core combo needed if you do not have end game uniques or runewords yet!

P.S.S. In case it was not obvious you only want more damage after Grief so Dracul's Grasp go for Laying of Hands or something else with IAS usually!