HEADSHOT

- Hallo, Qual-Kehk! You were looking for me.

- May god of war bless you, hero! Corrupted demons try to bring back to life Prime evils, using the last remaining parts of them. We have to destroy these organs and light the Hellfire torch to banich their spirits forever. We have all the keys, but my warriors are young and unexperienced. I think, you can teech them.

- Me? Teacher? Hmmm, what are you thinking, Mizan?

- Why not? Its easy job. And you promised to pay me double for extra hours. Im in.

- Bring me these warriors!

- Introduce youselves, young padawans!

- Im a pure-blood barbarian, mighty berserker with strong hand and deep voice. You have my axe!

- Im a member of the holy order of paladins. My faith is my weapon and I share my blessing with my friends. You have my shield!

 - Im an assassin, master of martial arts and secret mind spells. My kick is like a scorpion's spike - fast, toxic and deadly. You have my legs!

- Oh, there are a good pair of legs.

- Mizan, she dont means legs like... legs... Damn, just shut up! Wellcome to the Fellowship of the keys!

​

---------------------

​

 - Now, listen carefuly! I will tell you about a hidden weapon, called Crushing blow.

Crushing blow (CB) reduce the current remaining hit points of the target by 1/4 (melee) or 1/8 (ranged attack). CB applyes first, then regular phisical and added elemental damage. CB affects by phisical resist/immuned. For this reason cursed like Decrepify and Amplify are very useful.

CB dont works with spells. You must hit the target phisicaly - with weapon, punch, kick, claws, arrow, throwing weapon etc. Mizan, go ask Larzuk for full list of CB items!

 - Qual-Kehk, please bring me couple captured monsters, until young warriors read the list. Mizan, go to my stash and bring me my CB equipement.

Lets make some training! We will ignore other factors! Remove your added elemental damage. Monster dont have phisical resist or block. To guarantee highest chance to hit, we can use “Ignore target defence” mod. Of course, its not so simple, but its a training to understand the pure mechanics of Cruching blow. Lets begin!

​

Example 1: Mizan, your base damage is 1900 min - 3500 max melee character against normal monster with 10 000 hit points. Now lets see:

• 1.1) If you equip regular gear without enhanced damage and CB.Depending of min/max damage rolls, you must hit min 3 - max 6 times to kill the monster.

• 1.2) If you boost your damage, using better weapon/Forty/Phoenix/jewels/aura/skills and double your damage 3800-7000, you can kill the same monster with 2-3 hits

• 1.3) If you equipe some cheap gear like Guilla face helm + Rattlecage armor + Goblin toe boots = 100% CB,

Minimum

1-st hit 10000/4 = 2500 CB + 1900 min damage = 4400 hp lost, 5600 left.

2-nd hit 5600/4 = 1400 CB + 1900 min damage = 3300 hp lost, 2300 left.

3-rd hit 2300/4 = 575 CB + 1900 min damage = 2475 hp lost, 0 left.

​

Maximum

1-st hit 10000/4 = 2500 CB + 3500 max damage = 6000 hp lost, 4000 left.

2-nd hit 4000/4 = 1000 CB + 3500 max damage = 4500 hp lost, 0 left.

So, you can kill the same monster with 2-3 hits

​

- As you see CB is inependent of other mods, except phisical resist and speed. So, tell me what you learned from the this lesson!

- You dont need high damage weapon, expensive gear, high lvl skills, auras and other damage boosters.

​

- When you face a stronger monster, you have to strike a lot of blows. Speed is important. Wear 100% CB gear and give your best for fastest kill. Qual-Kehk, bring me shampion monsters with 40k hit points. Dont forget: If you hit Champions, Uniques or bosses, CB effect is halved: 1/8 (melee) and 1/16 (ranged). Now, tell me your stats.

 - 25 IAS. Berserk + axe mastery. Skills with  huge damage bonus, but slower -> damage 3800-9400. Speed is 13 fr per single hit.

- 25 IAS. Zeal+Fanaticism lvl 10. Skills with middle damage bonus, but faster -> damage 1900-4700. Speed is 5/5/5/5/9 frames.

 - 25 IAS. Dragon talon+BoS lvl 10. Skills with low damage bonus, but very fast -> damage 800-1900. Speed is 3/3/3/3/3/7 frames

​

Example 2: 100% CB gear, base weapon speed 0 (Berserker axe), 25 IAS VS 40 000 hp shampion/boss

​

• 2.1) Berserk 6600 avg damage, single hit 13 frames

1-st hit 40000/8 = 5000 CB + 6600 avg damage = 11600 hp lost, 28400 left.   13 fr

2-nd hit 28400/8 = 3550 CB + 6600 avg damage = 10150 hp lost, 18250 left.  13 fr

3-rd hit 18250/8 = 2281 CB + 6600 avg damage = 8881 hp lost, 9369 left.       13 fr

4-th hit 9369/8 = 1171 CB + 6600 avg damage = 7771 hp lost, 1598 left.         13 fr

5-th hit 0 left.                                                                                                            13 fr

Total 5 hits x13 fr = 65 frames

​

• 2.2) Zeal+lvl 10 Fanaticism 3300 avg damage (2x lower than Berserker), 5 hits per zeal 5/5/5/5/9 frames (2+ times faster than berserker)

1-st hit 40000/8 = 5000 CB + 3300 avg damage = 8800 hp lost, 31200 left.    5 fr

2-nd hit 31200/8 = 3900 CB + 3300 avg damage = 7200 hp lost, 24000 left.   5 fr

3-rd hit 24000/8 = 3000 CB + 3300 avg damage = 6300 hp lost, 17700 left.    5 fr

4-th hit 17700/8 = 2212 CB + 3300 avg damage = 5512 hp lost, 12188 left.     5 fr

5-th hit 12188/8 = 1523 CB + 3300 avg damage = 4832 hp lost, 7356 left.       9 fr

6-th hit 7356/8 = 919 CB + 3300 avg damage = 4219 hp lost, 3137 left.           5 fr

7-th hit 0 left.                                                                                                            5 fr

Total 7 hits = 39 frames, but anyway we must count full Zeal animation

8-th hit                                                                                                                       5 fr

9-th hit                                                                                                                       5 fr

10-th hit                                                                                                                     9 fr

Total 58 frames

​

• 2.3) Dragon talon+lvl 10 Burst of speed: 1350 avg damage (5x lower than berserker), 6 hits per kick 3/3/3/3/3/7 frames (3,5 times faster  than berserker)

1-st hit 40000/8 = 5000 CB + 1350 avg damage = 6350 hp lost, 33650 left.      3 fr

2-nd hit 33650/8 = 4206 CB + 1350 avg damage = 5556 hp lost, 28094 left.    3 fr

3-rd hit 28094/8 = 3512 CB + 1350 avg damage = 4862 hp lost, 23232 left.     3 fr

4-th hit 23232/8 = 2904 CB + 1350 avg damage = 4254 hp lost, 18978 left.     3 fr

5-th hit 18978/8 = 2372 CB + 1350 avg damage = 3722 hp lost, 15256 left.      3 fr

6-th hit 15256/8 = 1907 CB + 1350 avg damage = 3257 hp lost, 11999 left.      7 fr

7-th hit 11999/8 = 1500 CB + 1350 avg damage = 2850 hp lost, 9149 left.        3 fr

8-th hit 9149/8 = 1144 CB + 1350 avg damage = 2494 hp lost, 6655 left.          3 fr

9-th hit 6655/8 = 832 CB + 1350 avg damage = 2182 hp lost, 4473 left.            3 fr

10-th hit 4473/8 = 559 CB + 1350 avg damage = 1909 hp lost, 2564 left.          3 fr

11-th hit 2564/8 = 320 CB + 1350 avg damage = 1870 hp lost, 694 left.            3 fr

12-th hit 0 left.                                                                                                          7 fr

Total 2 kicks = 12 hits = 44 frames

​

- What do you learned from this lesson?

- CB + Speed works better than CB + Damage.

- If you dont have full stash of high runes, CB + fast-hitting skills + speed boosters are your best friends, even with low level char and crap equipement. If you dont believe me, ask Mizan!

- Your Act2 merc uses Jab. Give him as much as possible CB + IAS and walk on dead bodies :)

​

 - Unfortunately CB is single-target mod. The only way to hit multiple targets is ranged piercing attack.

- So Amazon's Strafe/Multipleshot + CB + pierce + IAS must be a powerful combination.

- Not realy! The main reason is: CB delivered with ranged attack deals 50% less damage.

 - Dont forget, sir, about another penalty

- You are right, Mizan. Explain the noobs!

 - Next delay: When monster have been hit by any ranged attack like arrow, throwing weapon, on-air spells (Fire bolt, Nova, Tornado, Bone spear etc), timer is activated and preventing next hit by any type melee, ranged, spells, including other character's. Ranged attack speed 4 frames or faster is useless VS the same target.

Multipleshot suffer by another restriction. Only middle 2 arrows carries all mods like CB, OW, DS etc.

- Ok, its late, you are tyred. Lets go to Atma's pub. Mizan today get double sallary and buy a dinner for all

- Hey, this is...

- The waypoint is over there.

​

--------------------

​

- Give us a final advice how to kill ubers!

 - Create an uber-weapon + mods by your needs. Find a fast 6-socket weapon (or Runemaster axe) and put Eth/Ber/Um/Shael runes inside. Ubers are lvl 110. You need high AR to hit them. No hit - no CB - no damage at all.

 - Blessed Aim merc can help.
 - You can try ro reduce enemy's  defence. Ignore target defence and Cloak of Shadows doesnt works on bosses. Decrepify curse overwrite your Life tap or Amplify. Battle Cry is helpful (Call to Arms). Conviction aura (Infinity) reduce Defence as well. On bosses "-X% of target defence" works only half.

 - Or may use skill, that always hits and dont need AR, like Smite.

 - As you already knows, Smite is not hit. It is bash/pish. Life and mana stolen doesnt works. Life tap is the only way to leech life. CS and DS doesnt works. CB and OW works with Smite.

 - What about added damage?

 - Added damage +X (Grief) is applied on base shield damage. Added +X to Y (Wartravs) - NO . Added +min/max damage – NO. Added elemental, poison, magic – NO. Added +%ed from weapon – NO. Added  +% ed from gear – YES (Forty, Phoenix). Not all is displayed correct on your character screen!

 - Seems like Smiter is the best uber killer.

 - Take your chances, young adveturers! And may the Force be with you!