Vow of Strength: Jack of All Trades

Needs more Heart of Fury. Mysticism at 9 doesn't give me a long enough [skill]Heart of Fury[/skill]
14 secs+ the enchanting grip comes to about 17 secs, and then you get the rest of the 30, 13 secs. Not all dervish builds need Heart of Fury.

Lastly, Aura of Thorns is optional, you can pop Heart of Fury in there if it suits you.

No, but Vow of Strength builds DO need IAS. Otherwise you're wasting HUGE potential - a 33% is equivalent to 50% more damage, overall.
And you're telling me that's... optional? Sure, it's optional, some people might wanna inflict some conditional damage as well, and some people might want to deal more straight damage with an IAS, idc what people put into the optional slot, it's all what you want, and if you want to argue more about, I'm happy to keep telling you that you can do what you want with this build's optional slot.

I'm looking for suggestions, so thank you for giving me another skill to put in, although I was already considering what IAS to use.

Vow of Strength is incredibly overrated... its additional damage decreases with armour, and the fact you have to run both Scythe and Earth at high ranks to make it useful completely screws up the possibility of an IAS... which in turn screws up the only reason to use it!
As said above, an IAS increases your damage by 50%, meaning simply using Heart of Fury and auto-attacking can technically be compared to Vow of Strength at 15 Earth Prayers.
Oh and you can actually use attack skills which is way more powerful, if Mystic Sweep/Eremite's Attack didn't exist then Vow of Strength might have potential... but they do exist, i can attack 3 times using attack skills causing way more damage by the time you've made 2 attacks.

Oh and i'd advise Hekets Rampage as an IAS. Mystic and Eremites don't allow me to do insane damage though? They are armor ingnoring, like sin skills, and it all matters on how many enchants are stacked on you, or how many enemies are adjacent, this build doesn't require any of that, and doesn't require you to have any additional energy or armor, or even a big IAS, and I don't want to invest points in BM for a cheap IAS that I have to keep renewing, I would rather have that handy condition removal. And last thing, Vow of Strength + Aura of Holy Might are not overrated, they are overpowered if nothing else, you show me a skill, or build, other than the Mystic Sandstorm Spiker, that can consistently hit for low 100's, or, on criticals, mid 300's per hit. If you can show me one, you win.

No it really doesn't. I've tested this many times and every time i do, Vow of Strength gets more and more pathetic. Using Strength of Honour, Judges Insight, Aura of Holy Might and Vow of Strength with a build that actually allowed an IAS (meaning my bar was just Heket's Rampage, AoHM and VoS), my critical was 262, with sundering (i think) ~310. This is on the 60AL barrel.

Unless your a complete idiot you can quite obviously tell that Vow of Strength will hit for more on a single attack... thats the whole frigging point of the skill. But over time... not a chance in hell. 33% IAS = 50% more damage = 15 earth prayers VoS equivilent. Attack skills = extra damage, 3/4s attack skills = even more damage in a set time. Your test data is quite obviously wrong... or your just taking the damage numbers at face value.

And more to the point how the hell were you doing 90 damage with Aura of Holy Might and Mystic Sweep if you were hitting the same target... i say again, your doing something wrong.

Side note, where did i say Aura of Holy Might was overrated? Aura of Holy Might is actually overpowered... or so Guildwiki tells me that its description is wrong, but thats not the point, its a 26% damage boost for a non-elite with a 1 second downtime using a 20% mod whereas Vow of Strength tends to do around 41% for an elite slot and no attack skills. Comparison? Vow of Strength sucks.

Edit: To add to the damage above... this is a level 20 60AL barrel. Not a level 26 overbuffed Jade Brotherhood Knight. Wow, you started a flamefest for a simple build that works effectively, and you probably haven't even tried the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOING build you moron. I'm sick and tired of this guru crap that happens everyday around here, flamers abroad. I hit 90 with mystic and aura of holy might, because +20, and then +25%, or 25 if the wiki description is right, and then the scythe damage should equal around there, so it did. So unless you wanna RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO with my thread anymore, I'm saying that the build is very easy to use, has an awesome self heal, and can maintain heavy damage to casters and other characters. End of story, good bye. Idc what the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO you think, if you haven't tried this build, with a weapon like mine, customized, you have no right to flame this thread.

Edit: The whole RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing point of VoS + an IAS is to combine the effects of the two, something you haven't pointed out this whole time. Last thing, and if you think hitting 262-310 damage on a critical to a AL 60 opponent is underpowered...you should just go to WoW.

Wow, you started a flamefest for a simple build that works effectively, and you probably haven't even tried the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOING build you moron. I'm sick and tired of this guru crap that happens everyday around here, flamers abroad. I hit 90 with mystic and aura of holy might, because +20, and then +25%, or 25 if the wiki description is right, and then the scythe damage should equal around there, so it did. So unless you wanna RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO with my thread anymore, I'm saying that the build is very easy to use, has an awesome self heal, and can maintain heavy damage to casters and other characters. End of story, good bye. Idc what the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO you think, if you haven't tried this build, with a weapon like mine, customized, you have no right to flame this thread.

Edit: The whole RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing point of VoS + an IAS is to combine the effects of the two, something you haven't pointed out this whole time. Last thing, and if you think hitting 262-310 damage on a critical to a AL 60 opponent is underpowered...you should just go to WoW. They were just offering advice no need to spaz out.

Last thing, and if you think hitting 262-310 damage on a critical to a AL 60 opponent is underpowered...you should just go to WoW. Yes... i was trying to say hitting for 262 was underpowered. Or was i trying to say that its targetting a regular 60AL barrel and not a lvl26+ overbuffed enemy with far more armour/damage reduction making VoS far less useful. Or maybe it was that Aura of Holy Might gives more damage than VoS if what the wiki says about it is true.

Wouldn't it be more desirable to move some of the attribute points from scythe mastery into earth or mysticism?

I'm just a noob, but was always under the impression that anything above 12 in a weapon mastery has *so* diminished returns for regular attacking, that it's not really worth it unless you want the benefit in attack skills based on the attribute - and that build doesn't have any scythe attacks in it - being a VoS build and all. What are you getting at... the entire point of VoS is to do as much damage as possible or theres not really much point in using the damn elite. Not much point attempting to use a pure damage elite if you have less than 14 Scythe.

What are you getting at... the entire point of VoS is to do as much damage as possible or theres not really much point in using the damn elite. Not much point attempting to use a pure damage elite if you have less than 14 Scythe. Looking it up, it seems to have about the same exact effect; going from 12 to 15 in weapon mastery gives you a 9% damage increase. Going from 12 to 15 in earth prayers gives you 9% damage from VoS (or about a 20% increase in VoS' effectiveness, if you wanna be super technical).

Though by sacrificing 2% scythe damage by dropping scythe mastery a notch, you could put a couple extra points into Mysticism for about a 15% longer duration on heart of fury (just basing this on the original build in the OP). You could move over another point from scythe mastery for 5% less damage and another second of burning from HoF if you really wanted.

You're right tho, the benefits aren't really that much to speak of - if any at all. I just assumed that a mastery level of >12 gave you a much lesser benefit as far as grunt attacking went, which if it was the case you would get more damage by moving some of the mastery points into earth for VoS.

Yes... i was trying to say hitting for 262 was underpowered. Or was i trying to say that its targetting a regular 60AL barrel and not a lvl26+ overbuffed enemy with far more armour/damage reduction making VoS far less useful. Or maybe it was that Aura of Holy Might gives more damage than VoS if what the wiki says about it is true. I see your logic, as I progressed more in NF, I noticed this more and more against the more buffed melee lines that were coming at me. But the casters still fell pretty hard with this, an IAS is definitely going to give this an edge, but Mystic and Eremite still unimpress me, as using Lyssa, AoHM, and a monk buffer still didn't put me as high as a critical from a AoHM/VoS strike, although the ability to strike as quickly as an IAS without one was extremely helpful to finish off that last bit of health in any enemy. As I progressed more into Nightfall, I started using the Psychotic Rampage dagger build, with Lyssa. Now that is one overpowered build. I was dealing more damage than my nukers vs. the Hunger, and any spellcaster was meat. I realize now that an IAS would make this build devastating, especially if General Morghan was there, spamming GftE, which makes almost every hit a critical, going to have to try that.