Ok, it's been said, done and tried way too many times. The only reason you'd run LF is to maximize your amount of damage packets. Which can then be increased by armor ignoring +dmg buffs. (SoH, orders etc. etc.)
So there I was, lounging in my chair and theorycrafting a bit about the Dervish update when it struck me. This will probably never be run because people can actually use 7 heroes so GW has become a singleplayer game for which you need a working connection (/QQ.) I came up with a build to maximise the actual amount of damage packages, which you can then increase with melee damage buffs and more importantly (if you're playing with other people, which you should if you intend to run this,) EBSoH and/or GDW, the second because you'd be knocklocking enemies with auto attacks. It's debatable because a fast recharge Splinter Weapon or even 2 copies of that would probably make you own adjacent foes in mere seconds.
Attributes:
Critical Strikes 11+1+1
Dagger Mastery 11+1
Wind Prayers (wtf?!) 8
Skills:
Locust's Fury [E]
Critical Agility [PvE]
Critical Eye
Dodge This! [PvE]
Whirling Charge
Lyssa's Haste
Aura of Holy Might [PvE]
[Optional] Test of Faith if playing without GDW to shutdown casters, if you are playing with GDW it's still good for Ench removal, Signet of Mystic Speed comes to mind too when playing in enchant-strip heavy areas... otherwise res sig or w/e
And there you have it, LF+CA is enough to actually have a core Locust's Fury build. But this is about maximizing damage packages (important: without delaying your auto-attacks.) And to just look cool swinging your butter knifes around while shouting stuff.
So has LF finally become effective? Probably not. But atleast it'd be something different from letting your heroes do all the work for you. *cough* Some food for thought is using a Paragon's Finales with this build, because every 2 seconds a shout would end on you if you spam DT! on recharge, which can be further increased by the use of Dark Fury and the like.
Remember kids; macro DT to your scrollbar unless you want to either play sub-optimal with a sub-optimal build, or if you want spastic fingers.
Criticism is welcome, constructive or not. Considering it's not quite the most serious build...
Yet another Locust's Fury attempt... with AoHM?!
Buns United
FoxBat
I'd try to fit in more enchants if you can, AoE 25 often does more than the ~16 single target dodge... interesting idea anyway.
Deadfalk
Sounds interesting, very interesting actually...
awry
why dodge this over sy!? some small amount of dmg is not worth the benefits of save yourselves. If there's any benefit to running lf over db spam, it's that you get more hits and thus more chances to sy spam. That having been said, the derv secondary doesn't look to be too effective. I'm sure crit strikes will provide the necessary energy, but the recharge is still too high for aohm to be effective.
whirling charge is just... unnecessary with ca, you can get the speed boost from the plethora of cheap consumables or just bring dash/better run skills.
The benefit of LF compared to db spam is
-You free your bar of all the chains
-You got more room for utility
-You get more hits thus more adrenaline and more dmg packets
-You can c space and rest your fingers.
reason #4 is the main reason why i run lf sometimes, my fingers are tired and i'm lazy as hell.
whirling charge is just... unnecessary with ca, you can get the speed boost from the plethora of cheap consumables or just bring dash/better run skills.
The benefit of LF compared to db spam is
-You free your bar of all the chains
-You got more room for utility
-You get more hits thus more adrenaline and more dmg packets
-You can c space and rest your fingers.
reason #4 is the main reason why i run lf sometimes, my fingers are tired and i'm lazy as hell.
Chthon
We've been over this before. (Start at post 50. If you want a laugh, read the comments by Tenebrae. (Yes, this is the imfamous "2 x 1.8 = 6" thread.)) If you do the math you'll discover that LF at 33%IAS produces less packets/time than JS+FF+DB. Sorry, LF is strictly inferior.
Chthon
Quote:
Originally Posted by awry
Alright, here's the math again:
Assume all sins are running 14 dagger, 13 crit strikes, 33%IAS.
Further assume that the double strike delay is not reduced by IAS. (It's too small for anyone to test effectively.)
Sin #1: LS
auto1 - (0.2 * 0.8911) + (0.8 * (0.8911 + 0.125)) - 80% chance of double strike.
That's 1.8 hits over 0.9911 sec for 1.81616386 hits/sec or 0.550611111 sec/hit.
Sin #2: JS+FF+DB, Kills target on first DB.
JS+FF+DB chain looks like this:
JS - 0.335
FF - 0.335
DB - 0.8911 + 0.125 double strike delay
So we get 4 hits in 1.6861 sec for an effective attack speed of 2.37233853 hits/sec or 0.421525 sec/hit.
Now multiply the difference in sec/hit across the entire JS+FF+DB chain to determine how far off optimal you'd need to be w/ the chain for LF to catch up.
(0.550611111 - 0.421525) * 4 = 0.516344444 or about 1/2 of a sec.
That is far too big an error margin to consider LF really close, even for a lazy man.
Sin #3: JS+FF+DB+auto+auto, needs to repeat chain an arbitrary number of times.
JS+FF+DB+auto+auto chain looks like this:
JS - 0.335
FF - 0.335
DB - 0.8911 + 0.125 double strike delay
auto1 - (0.7 * 0.8911) + (0.3 * (0.8911 + 0.125)) - 30% chance of double strike
auto2 - (0.7 * 0.8911) + (0.3 * (0.8911 + 0.125)) - 30% chance of double strike
(Notes on the autos:
1. They can go anywhere in the chain.
2. A super-efficient user might cancel the second auto to start the next Fox Fangs sooner. But you're proposing a lazy player, so we'll assume this never happens.)
So we get 6.6 hits in 3.5433 sec for an effective attack speed of 1.86267039 hits/sec or 0.536863636 sec/hit.
Now multiply the difference in sec/hit across the entire JS+FF+DB+auto+auto chain to see how big an error is needed for LF to catch up.
(0.550611111 - 0.536863636) * 6.6 = 0.090733335 or about 1/10 of a sec.
That one is close enough that LF is comparable if you can force yourself to forget about the +119 dmg and +86 AoE on the attack skills.
Sin #4: JS+FF+DB+MS+DB, DB is recharged instantly, Kills target on second DB
JS+FF+DB+MS+DB chain looks like this:
JS - 0.335
FF - 0.335
DB - 0.8911 + 0.125 double strike delay
MS - 0.8911
DB - 0.8911 + 0.125 double strike delay
So we get 7 hits in 3.5933 sec for an effective attack speed of 1.94807002 hits/sec or 0.513328571 sec/hit.
Now multiply the difference in sec/hit across the entire JS+FF+DB+MS+DB chain to see how big an error is needed for LF to catch up.
(0.550611111 - 0.513328571) * 7 = 0.26097778 or about 1/4 of a sec.
That probably would be close enough to consider an acceptable error margin if both options did the same damage. But they don't; the JS+FF+DB+MS+DB does +238 more single target damage and 172 more AoE damage in addition to being 1/4 sec faster at delivering 7 hits.
Sin #5 through infinity: JS+FF+DB+MS+DB+auto, arbitrarily large number of cycles required to kill target
2+(4*cycles) hits over 0.67 + (2.8358 * cycles) seconds.
With enough cycles, that eventually converges towards a significantly lower rate of hit/sec than LF, but not low enough to counteract the huge DPS difference coming off DB.
------
Sum:
LF delivers 4 hits a half second slower than JS+FF+DB, and does a lot less damage.
LF delivers the same number of hits as JS+FF+DB+auto+auto only marginally slower, but does a lot less damage.
LF delivers 7 hits a quarter second slower than JS+FF+DB+MS+DB, and does tremendously less damage.
Given enough cycles, LF delivers the same number of hits faster than (JS+FF+)DB+MS+auto, but still does less damage.
So, yep, LF is still junk.
(It's been said that maybe it could be decent for heroes given their inability to chain well, but I've never seen a sin hero bar that I car for, LF or otherwise.)
Beomagi
Well, you're right - the db spam would produce more attacks, but it is fun to see something being tried these days. We can regard an elite skill as useless and leave it to rot, or attempt to figure out how we can make it workable and have a little fun 
The advantage he has of course is all the extra energy. I'm not denying that you're getting more attacks, bleeding, and about 110 armor ignoring damage every 3.5 seconds or so with db spam.
So the question is how can you use all this energy to fuel flash enchantments or shouts and pop flash enchantments without slowing down?
Again - no, I don't see this comparing favorably to db spam.
From OP
Dodge This! [PvE]
Whirling Charge
Lyssa's Haste
Aura of Holy Might [PvE]
Lyssa's haste is good - but it's only benefiting one skill. Perhaps add another?
Whirling Charge recharges in 4 seconds.
37 cold damage + lets say a reasonable 8 in kurzick/luxon for 23 damage from aura of holy might.
Grenth's aura- a possibility? would give you a minimum against those really high armor targets.
Rending aura - another 4 second on recharge with lyssa's haste. Low damage - 26 damage at 8 wind, but you'll get cracked armor on them, and if you use knockdown on your optional, you'll be able to strip enchantments. To remove it, you'll need another skill of course. Cracked armor would mostly benefit the team, and stripping benefits everyone.. (please quote in context...)
The advantage he has of course is all the extra energy. I'm not denying that you're getting more attacks, bleeding, and about 110 armor ignoring damage every 3.5 seconds or so with db spam.
So the question is how can you use all this energy to fuel flash enchantments or shouts and pop flash enchantments without slowing down?
Again - no, I don't see this comparing favorably to db spam.
From OP
Dodge This! [PvE]
Whirling Charge
Lyssa's Haste
Aura of Holy Might [PvE]
Lyssa's haste is good - but it's only benefiting one skill. Perhaps add another?
Whirling Charge recharges in 4 seconds.
37 cold damage + lets say a reasonable 8 in kurzick/luxon for 23 damage from aura of holy might.
Grenth's aura- a possibility? would give you a minimum against those really high armor targets.
Rending aura - another 4 second on recharge with lyssa's haste. Low damage - 26 damage at 8 wind, but you'll get cracked armor on them, and if you use knockdown on your optional, you'll be able to strip enchantments. To remove it, you'll need another skill of course. Cracked armor would mostly benefit the team, and stripping benefits everyone.. (please quote in context...)
Chthon
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beomagi
Quote: So the question is how can you use all this energy to fuel flash enchantments If you want flash enchant spam, crit strikes + crit eye + wotm is enough to fuel Pious spam, with a scythe.
Quote:
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Grenth's aura- a possibility?
LF requires daggers; GA requires a scythe; so I'd say that it is not a possibility. Quote:
We NEED some kind of working model. Otherwise any kind of comparisons between skills or builds devolves into subjective dreck. You've basically got 3 methodological options: (a) decide something works rarely enough that you can assume it never works and treat the times it does work as trivial exceptions; (b) decided that something works reliably enough that you can assume it always works and treat the times it doesn't work as trivial exceptions; or (c) decide that the chance of something not working really does have a non-trivial effect on the average outcome and develop a working model of how often that happens so you can properly account for it.
All of the things you bring up I treat as so rare that they can be ignored as trivial. What proportion of monsters have effective melee hate (especially in light of the new AScan), diversion, effective e-denial, or crit immunity? Quote:
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Always did try to make original builds work, guess that's to each his own I suppose.
Although that's somewhat understandable with the connection around here.