A new appreciation for Faith

and a basic question..
if Faith ignores target defence, what's the point of attack rating bonus? isn't it attack rating / (attack rating+ defence rating) = x + (x + 0) = 1 regardless of the x value?

ganseng wrote: 2 weeks ago

and a basic question..
if Faith ignores target defence, what's the point of attack rating bonus? isn't it attack rating / (attack rating+ defence rating) = x + (x + 0) = 1 regardless of the x value?

ITD aint work on superuniqs (read bosses) at all

3 more points about the bows that haven't been discussed in detail..

1)

Hydra Bow is 26 points of strength over the

Grand Matron Bow, which is a wasted stat, and if you are not careful (like me), you won't be able to put on

Windforce and Fortitude simultaneously and witness ridiculous dmg become ludicrous.. unless you

Sacrifice one ring for high str or get some godly

Diadem and / or gloves with a ton of str..

2) while res is generally not a problem, instant Death to the souls in wsk is no fun.. so i normally wield Mist on lvl 2 & 3, and only switch to

Windforce before murdering

Baal

3)

Windforce's knockback is a great help against heralds, you generally can kill them even if valk sleeps on the job and doesn't tank for some reason.. against heralds every additional layer of safety is welcome

ganseng wrote: 2 weeks ago

btw, what's the best allround gloves for strafezon?

It depends. If you're using WF, 2/20/10 crafted

Blood Gloves with extra GG stats (like dex, life) are probably BIS. If you're using Faith and need the knockback, then 2/20 crafted

Hit Power Gloves with extra GG stats are probably BIS. If you don't care about knockback then it's same answer as for WF.

ganseng wrote: 2 weeks ago

Laying of Hands obviously against demons, but it's no good in the tombs or vs cows, and it's so annoying to switch (or worse forget to switch)
i use

Lava Gout recently, but a good pair of 2/20 would likely be better?

You should have enough AR either way if built correctly (at very least 10K) so there's little reason to go with

Lava Gout unless as prebuff for ubers or something.

Demon Limb would be more practical in that case.

Any decent (2/)20 IAS gloves (or even 3/20 magic gloves) will do.

Laying of Hands is good especially if you run a lot of Chaos like me. Apart from that, I think they're still good all-round gloves just for the 20 IAS and 50 fire res though.0

ganseng wrote: 2 weeks ago

and maybe counterintuitive, but isn't 2 to passive and magic better than 2 to bow &

Crossbow if i invested heavily into valk and all the passives are relatively low and would get ~one more percentage point per skill point?

Yes, physical bowazons actually benefit more from passive skills. Extra bow skills do little because that's not where the real damage is coming from while extra passive skills buff a wide range of (mostly defensive) stats that help keep your glass cannon alive and firing.

So when I said 2/20 or 3/20 gloves before, I meant + passive skills. Also don't misunderstand, bow skills are nice to have in the sense that you'd still put Faith in bow that has +3 bow skills, but you're probably not going to cry if it rolls +1skill 15fana though you might want to cry if it rolls +2skills 12fana.

ganseng wrote: 1 day ago

1)

Hydra Bow is 26 points of strength over the

Grand Matron Bow, which is a wasted stat, and if you are not careful (like me), you won't be able to put on

Windforce and Fortitude simultaneously and witness ridiculous dmg become ludicrous.. unless you

Sacrifice one ring for high str or get some godly

Diadem and / or gloves with a ton of str..

Respec so you can switch between WF and Faith comfortably or pick one and respec to optimize only for those requirements.

ganseng wrote: 1 day ago

2) while res is generally not a problem, instant Death to the souls in wsk is no fun.. so i normally wield Mist on lvl 2 & 3, and only switch to

Windforce before murdering

Baal

Decoys + recasting

Valkyrie + liberal use of off-screen 'detecting' and firing with

Strafe is what usually gets me through safely. Not as fast as I'd like though.

ganseng wrote: 1 day ago

3)

Windforce's knockback is a great help against heralds, you generally can kill them even if valk sleeps on the job and doesn't tank for some reason.. against heralds every additional layer of safety is welcome

You can use

Giant Skull with Faith setup for cheap source of knockback before you waste a fortune trying craft GG

Hit Power Gloves.

Baudolino wrote: 1 month ago

It's a bit off-topic, but seeing as we have some bow enthusiasts here: my

Enchant sorceress is rocking a

Demon Machine with a 20% IAS jewel. Since I'll have to make them for the chronicle anyway, would Faith or Brand improve her damage output?

Definitely not for Faith, since a huge chunk of Enchantress output is from the

Fire Mastery double stacking on exploding

Arrows. (And Faith won't even help you on an A1 merc, since

Demon Machine caps out at 10IAS.)

Brand would get the

Fire Mastery bonus and can

Cap out at a faster FPA than

Demon Machine, but I'm not sure it would even be better than a

Kuko Shakaku; you lose the

Pierce+50%, and Kuko can take a facet or fire Stone. Brand would probably be better on single target, I guess.

Speaking of which,

Demon Machine (and Kuko) are better off with a facet (or as mentioned, a fire Stone) than a

Shael. Get your IAS from gloves, or even better, from a Hellwarden's with a facet in it.

thx for the detailed answer! it's largely consistent with my opinions. the only thing I'm not sure about is

Laying of Hands in the

Chaos Sanctuary, as 2/3 enemy types there are not demons..

and speaking of the gloves, it's easy to underestimate how hard it is to get a pair of gg yellow gloves. i've gotten 3.5 griffon's by now (one ethereal) and just one pair of 2/20 java gloves (with somewhat decent extras)..

sor wrote: 1 day ago

ganseng wrote: 2 weeks ago

btw, what's the best allround gloves for strafezon?

It depends. If you're using WF, 2/20/10 crafted

Blood Gloves with extra GG stats (like dex, life) are probably BIS. If you're using Faith and need the knockback, then 2/20 crafted

Hit Power Gloves with extra GG stats are probably BIS. If you don't care about knockback then it's same answer as for WF.

ganseng wrote: 2 weeks ago

Laying of Hands obviously against demons, but it's no good in the tombs or vs cows, and it's so annoying to switch (or worse forget to switch)
i use

Lava Gout recently, but a good pair of 2/20 would likely be better?

You should have enough AR either way if built correctly (at very least 10K) so there's little reason to go with

Lava Gout unless as prebuff for ubers or something.

Demon Limb would be more practical in that case.

Any decent (2/)20 IAS gloves (or even 3/20 magic gloves) will do.

Laying of Hands is good especially if you run a lot of Chaos like me. Apart from that, I think they're still good all-round gloves just for the 20 IAS and 50 fire res though.0

ganseng wrote: 2 weeks ago

and maybe counterintuitive, but isn't 2 to passive and magic better than 2 to bow &

Crossbow if i invested heavily into valk and all the passives are relatively low and would get ~one more percentage point per skill point?

Yes, physical bowazons actually benefit more from passive skills. Extra bow skills do little because that's not where the real damage is coming from while extra passive skills buff a wide range of (mostly defensive) stats that help keep your glass cannon alive and firing.

So when I said 2/20 or 3/20 gloves before, I meant + passive skills. Also don't misunderstand, bow skills are nice to have in the sense that you'd still put Faith in bow that has +3 bow skills, but you're probably not going to cry if it rolls +1skill 15fana though you might want to cry if it rolls +2skills 12fana.

ganseng wrote: 1 day ago

1)

Hydra Bow is 26 points of strength over the

Grand Matron Bow, which is a wasted stat, and if you are not careful (like me), you won't be able to put on

Windforce and Fortitude simultaneously and witness ridiculous dmg become ludicrous.. unless you

Sacrifice one ring for high str or get some godly

Diadem and / or gloves with a ton of str..

Respec so you can switch between WF and Faith comfortably or pick one and respec to optimize only for those requirements.

ganseng wrote: 1 day ago

2) while res is generally not a problem, instant Death to the souls in wsk is no fun.. so i normally wield Mist on lvl 2 & 3, and only switch to

Windforce before murdering

Baal

Decoys + recasting

Valkyrie + liberal use of off-screen 'detecting' and firing with

Strafe is what usually gets me through safely. Not as fast as I'd like though.

ganseng wrote: 1 day ago

3)

Windforce's knockback is a great help against heralds, you generally can kill them even if valk sleeps on the job and doesn't tank for some reason.. against heralds every additional layer of safety is welcome

You can use

Giant Skull with Faith setup for cheap source of knockback before you waste a fortune trying craft GG

Hit Power Gloves.

P Stone on WF is so badass.

A1 merc /w Faith

9.8k dmge max

Strafe

So what is the consensus? Wind force on main or Faith ?

after the uber stones are introduced, my vote goes to

Windforce on main and Faith on merc

Pride/might + stoned WF imo, after shuffling gear around a fair bit to optimize.

Would be Faith merc + stoned WF if it wasn't for the crap fana range and equally crap A1 merc AI/speed causing constant aura loss.
Though if you're one of them weird Enigma zons, I guess A1 merc works well enough, thanks to her teleporting along with you.

Icee913 wrote: 13 hours ago

P Stone on WF is so badass.

A1 merc /w Faith

9.8k dmge max

Strafe

nice! I'm stuck with 7k, unable to string that bow without Enigma, reluctant to respec hoping for a godly

Diadem and/or gloves.. and frankly killing everything quick enough anyways

do you have full stack of fully optimized charms or is there still room to squeeze a couple hundred more dmg?

just to give complete picture, this setup will never reach max attack speed on

Strafe, and even to reach 60 ias you need either 2+ ias stones which is prohibitively expensive, or some suboptimal combination of

Nosferatu's Coil, double horazon's.. or double Immortal King??

Schnorki wrote: 11 hours ago

Pride/might + stoned WF imo, after shuffling gear around a fair bit to optimize.

Would be Faith merc + stoned WF if it wasn't for the crap fana range and equally crap A1 merc AI/speed causing constant aura loss.
Though if you're one of them weird Enigma zons, I guess A1 merc works well enough, thanks to her teleporting along with you.

ganseng wrote: 10 hours ago

Icee913 wrote: 13 hours ago

P Stone on WF is so badass.

A1 merc /w Faith

9.8k dmge max

Strafe

nice! I'm stuck with 7k, unable to string that bow without Enigma, reluctant to respec hoping for a godly

Diadem and/or gloves.. and frankly killing everything quick enough anyways

do you have full stack of fully optimized charms or is there still room to squeeze a couple hundred more dmg?

got some +dmge damage charms and I'm using a +98% ED

Renewed Bone Break. Probably more damage if I used - physical resistance, but that's all I got for now.

also using a physical ED

Opalvein. Fortitude main armor.

ganseng wrote: 10 hours ago

Icee913 wrote: 13 hours ago

P Stone on WF is so badass.

A1 merc /w Faith

9.8k dmge max

Strafe

nice! I'm stuck with 7k, unable to string that bow without Enigma, reluctant to respec hoping for a godly

Diadem and/or gloves.. and frankly killing everything quick enough anyways

do you have full stack of fully optimized charms or is there still room to squeeze a couple hundred more dmg?

At that number, there's room for a couple k more with a Faith merc, more than just a couple k with Pride/might.
(And again a bit more in full dex)

ganseng wrote: 10 hours ago

just to give complete picture, this setup will never reach max attack speed on

Strafe, and even to reach 60 ias you need either 2+ ias stones which is prohibitively expensive, or some suboptimal combination of

Nosferatu's Coil, double horazon's.. or double Immortal King??

Schnorki wrote: 11 hours ago

Pride/might + stoned WF imo, after shuffling gear around a fair bit to optimize.

Would be Faith merc + stoned WF if it wasn't for the crap fana range and equally crap A1 merc AI/speed causing constant aura loss.
Though if you're one of them weird Enigma zons, I guess A1 merc works well enough, thanks to her teleporting along with you.

Your target WF base speed typically isn't "max

Strafe" but rather 90 IAS. Or 89, technically. Takes your multi/GA down to 9 and

Strafe to 5/3/7. After that, the gearing focus isn't on more speed but on maximizing the per-hit dmg. IF you're more on the

Strafe-focused side of things, 120 is an option but for more rounded, let alone MS heavy builds, you tend to

Sacrifice way too much to get that so personally, I prefer the more balanced 90 target. And that's absolutely doable without sacrificing much elsewhere.

Alternatively, if you do want max speeds, that same level of IAS gets you to max

Strafe and 8 multi/GA if you run a Mania off-set (so long as you're willing to deal with the proccing). Technically, if you reliably run that you'd need 12 less than said 90 but since an optimized setup uses 15 or 20 on each piece and doesn't have a 10 to swap out, it actually doesn't make a difference. So you can merrily choose to run Mania off-set or any other off-set without changing anything else for it based on whether or not you're willing to deal with the proccing. If you are, it does outperform any other option in terms of offensive performance. Plus fully, properly geared, even Mania takes out a ton of mob types' groups in one volley of

Strafe so as long as you time things right and know your targets, you're not even losing any performance to proc it. But it does remain somewhat annoying from a playstyle perspective so I don't blame anyone for not running it (and end up too lazy to do so myself most of the time as well).

Running with a Faith merc, you'd either ideally want 2 more instead to hit 92 for 7 frame multi/GA or drop to 50 with a bit more of a

Strafe focus. It does offer less performance than a Mania/might/Pride approach but is far lazier and more chill (thanks to no proc). And if it wasn't for the constant aura drop-off, it would outperform might/Pride without Mania (albeit not by much actually).