Archived from groups: alt.games.diablo (More info?)

A little while back I found a ribcracker and I was looking for a build to
make use of its potential. For those that are not familiar with the Mean
Blue Staff, here are the stats:


Ribcracker Quarterstaff:
Two-Hand Damage: (54-62) To (143-169) (98.5-115.5 Avg)
Required Level: 31
Required Strength: 25
Durability: 130
Base Weapon Speed: [0]
+200-300% Enhanced Damage(varies)
Adds 30-65 Damage
+50% Damage To Undead
50% Chance Of Crushing Blow
50% Increased Attack Speed
50% Faster Hit Recovery
+100% Enhanced Defense
+100 Defense
+15 To Dexterity

Mine is 248% ED which makes for 58-155 damage. I plan on upgrading the
staff to use as an end-game weapon and it should do 291-437, which seems
respectable.

A lot of people have reported successes with shapeshifting druids using a
ribcracker, and some others have mentionned Staffadins. There's also
staffarians, staff-wielding barbarians. I never liked playing
shapeshifters, so that's out of the equation. A staff-wielding paladin
would basically be a regular fanatical zealot build and I already have a
couple of those off-ladder, and I'm not a huge fan of barbarians so what
was left? Why not make a staff-wielding assassin? After all, a lot of
martial arts use staves, so what could be done here?

SisterSalvation was thus born. Since she's using a staff she can't use
any of the dual claw skills, so I decided to skip the elemental MA skills
entirely. The Plan for level 99 (yeah right!) is as follows:

20 Dragon Talon
20 Tiger Strike
20 Dragon Tail
20 Venom
5 Burst of speed
1 Dragon Flight
1 Mind Blast
1 Blade Fury
1 Death Sentry
1 (and all left-over points) Shadow Master
and all the prereqs.

With 1 in Shadow Master that's a whopping total of 104 points, so it's a
long-run build.

The different options are as follows:

Kick with dragon talon and get ungodly speed applying tons of crushing
blow and taking down bosses faster than any other char I've played so far
(and she's only got 12 in DTalon so far, so only 3 kicks but they blur
into one!)

Charge up with Tiger Strike (getting crushing blow hits along the way)
and release with Dragon Tail for major fire splash damage and crowd-
knockback (with just 2-3 points in TS and 5 in DTail, I get about 2350
dam using IK boots).

Use venom and Blade Fury to kill from a distance, getting tons of
crushing blow hits and keeping the venom steadily applied. So far with 12
in venom and Trang Oul's gloves, I'm doing 306-331 damage per .4 seconds,
which translates into 765-827.5 per second.

In all of the above scenarios, I have 5 death sentries up ready to start
a chain reaction as soon as a corpse hits the ground. Since I only have
one point and my equipement is currently low on +skills (only +1 assassin
skills) I only have a range of 3.6 yards for the corpse explosion but
it's still effective and will only become more so with more + skills as
she levels along.

So far she's wearing a +1 assasin skills circlet which I'm looking to
replace with a +3 MA circlet, and a nondescript rare amu with a little of
everything which I'm thinking could be replaced with a +3 MA amu. She's
wearing heavenly garb at the moment, for the resists and looks (the blue
goes very well with the ribcracker when venom's not on, and still looks
good when the stick's green) and the lack of better armor with both
resists and + skills. In time I'll probably find something better.

She's headed towards around 200 str, 150-175 dex and the rest into vit.
The strenght is needed to wear the heavy boots and adds to both the
damage formula for the kicks and the damage of the boots (1.2
multiplier).

I'm thinking that some +3 Shadow with +3 to both or either of Venom and
Shadow Master would do well on switch.

So far it's smooth sailing into nightmare, the only problem I found was
when i first got to act 2 where I'd kill myself killing beetles because
of low lightning resists and attacking too aggressively with kicks. Since
beetles release sparks every x time they're hit and when they die,
kicking them at break-neck speeds with Dragon Talon was releasing tons of
sparks on my head and the resulting corpse explosions would take out the
remaining beetles whose sparks would in turn take out the rest of my
life. A couple of deaths later I was furying away from a distance and
enjoying a much safer and only slightly slower travel through the desert.

So far she kills bosses much faster than any other character I've played
before. I think she could make a great clone killer when she gets to
hell!

*-) K.os
--
"He imagined for a moment his itinerary connecting up all the dots in the
sky like a child's numbered dots puzzle. He hoped that from some vantage
point in the Universe it might be seen to spell a very, very rude word" -
D. N. Adams

Archived from groups: alt.games.diablo (More info?)

"K.os" <K.os023@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:Xns961F94BCAC5C5Ewigeblumenkraft@individual.net...
> A little while back I found a ribcracker and I was looking for a build to
> make use of its potential. For those that are not familiar with the Mean
> Blue Staff, here are the stats:
>
>
<snippers>

You might have just inspired me on my next Assassin build.

Max Tiger Strike, Dragon Tail
1 in DS and Fury, extra points go to FireBlast for more DS shots.
Max either Dragon Talon or Dragon Claw. Or something.
1 Shadow Master

short