Plague Javelin* is your primary Damage Skill. It has a short cooldown and leaves a trail of Poison Damage behind its travel path. When the Javelin stops traveling, it releases a larger cloud of Poison AoE damage. DOTs prevent a monster from healing until the effect expires.

lightningfury* is your secondary Damage Skill. Each Javelin splits into tons of additional Lightning projectiles that target all other monsters on screen, which then split even further to multiply your damage output.

Jab* is a back-up Skill that deals melee Physical Damage with 3 attacks in rapid succession. This can be used to apply Crushing Blow to tanky Boss monsters.

Impale* is a slow attack skill that uses a lot of durability, but Always Hits and is Uninterruptible. This Skill Slows monsters by a percent. It's also used to apply certain effects like Open Wounds or Crushing Blow for niche scenarios.

Slow Missiles* slows ranged attacks in a large radius and grants Physical Damage Reduction when cast.

Critical Strike* grants a chance to double Physical Damage on Attack Skills. Though this build does not rely on this damage type, it boosts your average Jab damage.

Penetrate* gives you additional Attack Rating as a passive bonus.

Pierce* is a very important Skill for this build. It allows your Projectiles (Arrows/Javelins) to pass through your enemies and hit the ones behind as well. You can Pierce up to 5 targets.

Dodge*, Avoid*, and Evade* passively grant you a chance to dodge enemy attacks in the situations mentioned in the Skill. A dodged attack is negated completely.

Decoy* spawns a duplicate of yourself on the area you target, drawing the enemy's attention to it.

Valkyrie* also can be used like a Decoy but she acts similar to a Mercenary as it follows you and attacks monsters.

While every Stat in the Desirable Stats column is useful for this build, we highlighted the Priority Stats in Teal so you can easily identify the Most Important Stats on them.

Hover over any Item to see a pop-out with the full Item description.

Gear/Base Notes: Any Items with specialized or niche uses have a superscript that refers here.
1) Wizardspike is great for your Weapon-Swap, allowing you to get around faster with Teleport.

The areas below are efficient farming locations that make use of the build’s strengths. Other farming spots might not be as effective due to immunities or bad layouts. These areas are strong without a Sunder Charm.

Anything that has a ✔ in the "Starter" column can be farmed with the Starter Variant.

Your Mercenary serves an incredibly important role to the overall success of your build. They can be a front line tank, provide a pivotal Aura, and/or deal Physical Damage to kill enemies with Immunity to your Skill set.

NOTE: While most Mercenaries want to have the highest Defense value possible, this actually reduces the chance of proc'ing lowerresist. Our mercenary needs to get hit in the first place to have a chance to proc. Do NOT upgrade base armors and AVOID Ethereal versions. This also makes this mercenary cheaper and easier to outfit!

The Mercenary is hard to keep alive until you have the minimum gear recommended in this guide. Remember you can drag Healing Potions onto the portrait, or shift + 1/2/3/4 to directly feed them a Healing Potion from your Belt. The Mercenary also gains bonus Resistances from Thawing Potions and Antidote Potions.

If your Mercenary dies in battle, you can revive them from any of the Mercenary NPCs in each Act. This does come with an increasing cost, capping at 50,000 Gold. Keep that in mind and decide if the Mercenary is currently worth the cost.

Breakpoints in Diablo 2 are the minimum values required to reduce the frames of an action. Below are the important breakpoints considered for this build. For more information on the mechanics involved, check out our in-depth Resource: Breakpoints.

Increased Attack Speed speeds up your attack animations. Weapon bases have different IAS breakpoints. Values for recommended weapon options provided below. Consult the d2planner for other bases.

Faster Hit Recovery increases survivability. Aim for at least the 86% FHR Breakpoint.

For all Hardcore gameplay, your primary concern is increasing your Resistances, Damage Reduction, Chance to Block and Maximum Life. This can mean sacrificing overall power level for a more secure playstyle.

This build is Hardcore viable. If you are unaccustomed to this playstyle, we recommend trying this build on Softcore to gain experience on how to successfully pilot it.