i’m running a bladesin and i see a lot of talk about attack rating, and yet most of the build guides do NOT seem to put a lot of points in dex or in claw mastery to get high AR
looking at the tree
blade sentinel - does a trap need AR ?
blade fury - this looks like an attack, so AR should apply (and the skill has an AR attribute)
blade shield - this seems like it’s also an “attack” and i would think AR would apply
I found a very long thread about claw mastery and it appears that it applies inconsistently to the above skills.
Just looking for any insight as to how i should allocate points.
Quick suggestio: go to maxroll d2r planner, and make some tests over there, it’s quite reliable.
Blade sentinel:
it has a base AR for each difficulty:
897 1589 3337
Then add 80 for the base dexterity value (20 for the assassin).
Then add 5x each point you put into dexterity.
AR from claw mastery is not taken into account.
Every other AR from gear (+AR and +%AR) is fine.
+%AR is far more important.
Tip: hustle weapon as secondary weapon does work, both for AR and DMG.
Blade Fury
it has +%AR from each lvl in the skill
Then add 80 for the base dexterity value (20 for the assassin).
Then add 5x each point you put into dexterity.
AR from claw mastery is not taken into account.
Every other AR from gear (+AR and +%AR) is fine.
+AR is far more important than +%AR.
For dmg, primary weapon type is choosen: if you have a claw weapon, then you have STR+DEX multiplied by 0.75 as DMG multiplier, so DEX is the way to go here.
Same for daggers , and that’s why fleshripper is one of the top tier weapon to choose from:
1H damage: 45-228
+200-300% Enhanced Damage
-50% Target Defense
25% Chance of Crushing Blow
33% Deadly Strike
50% Chance of Open Wounds
Prevent Monster Heal
Slows Target By 20%
Attacker Takes Lightning Damage of 20
If you have a bow (EDGE runeword is godly as early levelling) the DMG multiplier is DEX.
If you have a mace, then DMG multiplier is STRx1.1.
My suggestion: claw and daggers, EDGE for levelling to hell, but there are so many alternatives here… lawbringer RW (but it has dead monsters rest in peace mod, so no more death sentry), dual claw, and so on…
DEX at least on the 200 mark.
The % AR on Blade fury was added a few patches ago, most of what your reading is from when there was no AR bonus at all for Blade skills. The situation is better now but you still only get 200%+ AR bonus vs the up to 400% on Zealots or WW Druids. It makes Blade skills more in line with Bowazon’s AR bonus.
What that means is you still need to get some decent + to AR/%AR bonuses. Mods like Ignore target Def, socketing an Eth into the weapon are still good ideas. Honestly those are good idea’s for any build relying of AR.
I see, around the recent patch (2.6) maxroll finally fixed the AR% glitch for blade fury (before the fix, AR% from blade fury skill was not implemented on their website). But from your description, they still haven’t fixed the AR% glitch for blade sentinel. This is a crucial consideration for patch 2.6 - because AR% from claw mastery works for blade sentinel and it’s essential to bring this skill to its full potential. In patch 2.6, you would want max AR for all 5 blade sentinels for max damage because of the independent NHD for each of the traps. Thus using a high damage claw (like eth plague) with maximized claw mastery would still be favorable over a high damage axe (eth death).
Please refer to this post for some AR discussion. The charts in the guide are quite useful.