I've been doing this build myself and it's working great so far. Excellent guide. I notice that you listed stat allocation as enough strength/constitution to use the best gear and the rest into willpower, though. I'm wondering whether or not it's really worth it to boost willpower as much as possible or focus on strength instead.
Since Berserk translates stamina directly into damage, both Str and Wil add damage, but which one adds more? Str adds 1 point of damage per 2 attribute points invested (so +0.5 damage per point), while 1 point of willpower adds 5 stamina (which translates to +0.75 damage with upgraded Berserk active, so 1 Wil ils worth +0.25 damage over 1 Str, again assuming Berserk is active). From a pure damage perspective willpower would appear to be better, but the thing is, strength doesn't only add pure damage. It also adds attack and fortitude.
I used a couple respecs on my level 20 guy to see just how much of an attack difference we're talking: After getting 41 Str for Bloom and 31 for Champion Armor, I had 19 points left over to put wherever I want, and putting all of those into Str resulted in +10% chance to hit as opposed to what I'd have if I put them all into Wil instead (98% as opposed to 88% vs normal enemies).
For an idea of how much of a difference this makes in your DPS: Putting the points into Wil would've given +4.75 (19 * 0.25) damage over the Str build. With +10% chance to hit on the Str build, this means it should land an extra hit that the Wil build would've missed once every 10 hits. So out of 10 attacks, the Str build would hit 10, while the Wil build would miss one, but the Wil build would do a little more damage on each hit that it did land. Which one wins out? Well, my guy's base damage on the Str build is 63 (60 Str + Bloom), so that's at least +63 damage over the Wil build when that extra hit happens; however, that's just what is displayed on the attributes screen, which doesn't take into account bonuses from sustains or runes, so in reality it's much more than 63 damage (exactly how much more I can't be bothered to calculate). So the Str build gets 63+ extra damage from that extra hit; how much extra damage does the Wil build get from doing a bit more on the 9 hits it does land? Only 42.75 (9 * 4.75). If I've got my math right, over the course of 10 attacks (and in general), the build that focuses on Str does more damage.
Again, in addition to that, the Str guy also has a lot more fortitude for whatever that's worth. Perhaps most importantly of all, it seems like a Str-focused build would be far, far better for taking on elite bosses like the High Dragon since you can't viably sustain Berserk against those guys, and once you turn Berserk off, all your extra damage from pumping Wil means nothing anymore, but a Str-focused build still has all of its Str-based damage going.
Now, in addition to raw damage Wil also gives you more stamina to use for activated abilities, but with this build it seems like that should be a non-issue, since as you said, using activated abilities often actually lowers your DPS anyways.
The bottom line? Seems to me that the stat allocation should be enough Con to wear the best armor + pure Str after that. Maybe invest a few points into Willpower if for some reason you need enough stamina to use all of your activated abilities at once, but past that, ignore it. Of course I could be missing something here and I welcome someone to correct me if that's the case.
Bearbeitet von WJC3688, 20 März 2011 - 12:20 .
Also, the suggestion for Death Blow is to keep stamina levels high -- yet Second Wind is simply all around superior. Over time it should come out to about the same gains, yet you can control when you get a complete refill with it AND it costs you less points to get.
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