[Brigand] Rate my plan for a spear Brigand

[Rpa]

I decided on trying a trapless spear Brigand. I want to focus on high one-hit damage with high DOT type (mostly poison) damage to be effective in hit-and-run tactics later in legendary. My plan:

http://www.titancalc.com/TitanCalc.a...10-6-0-6-0-6-0

Max. Wood Lore + Blade Honing + Art of the Hunt for passively boosting spear damage.
Calculated Strike seems good when you use it with care, although it may lose some of its effectiveness on legendary when you rarely have time to stop and land four hits... Still, seems worthy enough.
I skipped the passive damage boosters (Gouge and Open Wound). The extra damage they give is seem fairly low in late game even with Anatomy. Gouge even seems to be a significantly slower attack than normal, effectively decreasing your damage output.
OTOH, Volley seems good, although I did not try it yet.
Call of the Hunt seems to be a godly buff for pierce damage dealers.
Study prey + Flush out for the more difficult and/or pierce resistant enemies.
Toxin Distillation should give a huge boost to poison damage since AFAIK it does not work as in D2 (where +poison damage meant the whole damage over duration) but boosts damage/sec and duration as well.
Mandrake seems to be very good at debilitating enemies.
Lethal Strike for bosses and dangerous enemies.
6 points in Herbal Remedy may not be needed, but the poison resist is nice.
For crowd control I plan on using Monter Lure (I read somewhere that they have high damage resistance so they are hardy despite the seemingly low hp), flash powder and poison bomb.
1 point in Take Down and 6 in Trail Blazing for mobility.

Now I see two points that I am unsure of and can ruin the build.
- I read somewhere that lethal strike does not work with axes. Does it work with spears?
- Can poisons be effective on legendary even with Toxin Distillation? While I did not find a good legendary with poison damage yet, +250 poison damage is a normal modifier in legendary so I expect 300-500 on a legendary spear. It can be boosted further by poison damage on other equipment, so with Toxin Distillation and +% poison damage on items 2000-3000 poison damage should be reachable. Still not a huge amount but seems nice nontheless.

What do you think of this build?

[ArcaneX]

Taking TrailBlazing to a max - i think its wrong. It gives yu like +2 % per lvl wich yu can easily get from items , its better to live it at 1 and better max out find cover ( those archers can shure hurt ). As for mosnter lure .... Well from yur bild i see that yur planing on using Spears. And that ScareCrow will go down in seconds and all the pack of mobs will go after yu i think its useless for melee bild. Yu should better max LuckyHit. As for poisons dnt know havnt test them on Legendery yet.

[Rpa]

Originally Posted by ArcaneX

As for mosnter lure .... Well from yur bild i see that yur planing on using Spears. And that ScareCrow will go down in seconds and all the pack of mobs will go after yu i think its useless for melee bild. Yu should better max LuckyHit. As for poisons dnt know havnt test them on Legendery yet.

At first I also thought that monster lure is weak, but Viperace claims that they are though in Legendary. Quote from this thread:

"It is tough, in Legendary difficulty. This thing may have a very high damage soaking ability, for some reason, physical damage mob never been able to scratch its HP. Casters mob are able to reduce its HP somehow though."

I did not try but Lucky Hit seemed weak for a skill that activates only on every 12th hit. I may be wrong about that.

[ArcaneX]

Well hmm Shield proqs have 12% of activations and the pump out like mad. So a 33 % its almot everytime ( with it my assasin when he was 24 lvl got 1300 dmg with Ying wepon and DeathWeavers leg tip >)

[trevah]

From what I know of brigands, this would seem like a better build:
http://www.titancalc.com/TitanCalc.a...10-1-0-0-0-6-0

Rogue tree:
Only one point in CS (bit of overkill) but maxed Lucky Strike since you want bleeding damage. Maxed poison since you want that. Added throwing daggers as a survival mechanism against archers and casters and stuff. Lost Gas Bomb cuz it sucks

Hunter:
Flush out is pointless for a hunter. Monster Lure and Herbal Remedy are both a waste. You'll rely on flash powder and throwing daggers+poison to survive.

[Viperace]

That Scare Crow is very strong in Legendary. See my thread about it "Monster Lure - an underappreciated skill" , if you are not convinced.

[Felexitus]

viperace also stated that monster lure gives diminishing returns if you have another pet, say trap for example. though if you dont want traps by all means put some points into it. in this game having a pet = awesome no matter what it is. and monster lure works well with poison.

if you really focus your build on poison damage i think it might work. later the modifiers on weapons are around 300 poison damage, add 100 from envenom, 100 from your socket. and about 250% from skills and items and multiply with the duration buff you get your 3k damage.

[Rpa]

Originally Posted by trevah

Rogue tree:
Only one point in CS (bit of overkill) but maxed Lucky Strike since you want bleeding damage. Maxed poison since you want that. Added throwing daggers as a survival mechanism against archers and casters and stuff. Lost Gas Bomb cuz it sucks

Hunter:
Flush out is pointless for a hunter. Monster Lure and Herbal Remedy are both a waste. You'll rely on flash powder and throwing daggers+poison to survive.

I plan on increasing Calculated Strike gradually. It may be an overkill early on, but I suppose in late game it is useful, especially on bosses. I do not want to concentrate on bleeding damage but poison. Moreover, 171 bleeding damage is not much (even when increased by Anatomy and Call of the Hunt) especially if you have 1/9 chance of getting it from a hit that happens 1/4 of the time...
Also, putting 11 points more into Envenom Weapon for 82 more poison damage then at level 1 seems like a waste of points. OTOH, increasing Nightshade could indeed be useful both for the damage and the slowing effect.
One point into Gas Bomb IMO is a very cheap way of getting a ranged debilitating effect. I suppose Flurry of Knives with Mandrake can be more effective but (if it works like Ice Shards) seems not very reliable. Still it is worth a try.
As for Herbal Remedy, 72% poison resist (or 88% at +2) for 6 points does seem as a very good deal to me. People usually get Permanence of Stone when using the Nature mastery to get +18% Elemental (=54% individual) resistance and that also costs 1 active energy. Herbal Remedy does not cost active energy and also adds health regeneration.
The value of Monster Lure depends on its hardiness. If it can tank enemies for a longer time, it is invaluable, just like any hardy pet, or even better than most of them since it has provoke. If it goes down fast, it is worthless, but others report that it is not so.

[ArcaneX]

Hmm about psn in TQ ... Does psn dmg like 300 over 4 sec means that it will do 300 psn dmg in 4 seconds or it will do 300 psn dmg each second for 4 seconds .... /

[Felexitus]

nono calc strike is simply overkill, no matter when and where and its 300 over the course of 4s