Help with Avenger

[FraterPerdurabo]

Ok, I decided to make an Avenger build, but I need serious help with it. I would really appreciate someone who would actually be bothered to read through of what I wrote instead of spamming solutions that I have already considered. Avenger experts welcome.

This was the chosen equipment.

Helm: Dream
Armor: Fortitude
Weapon: Hand of Justice Berserker Axe
Shield: Exile
Belt: Verdungo
Gloves: Dracul's
Boots: Goreriders
Ring: Raven
Ring2: BK
Amulet: Mara
anni and torch ofc

Now, with this build, I want to do as much elemental damage as possible. This meant that I was going to sacrifice points from Holy Shield for Resist Fire, Resist Lightning and Resist Cold.

I planned my build for level 92, so here is how I distributed my skills:

20 Vengeance
15 Conviction
20 Resist Lightning
10 Resist Fire
10 Resist Cold
17+ Holy Shield
rest prerequisites

After some more experimenting, I found 2 problems
1) IAS
Holy Fire was utter shit, since at level 20, it only adds 109-127 fire damage, therefore Dragon armor and Hand of Justicez were pointless.
The other weapons that I experimented with were Doom and Famine. The problem with Doomz was that I ran out of mana VERY quickly.
Famine did excellent damage, best of the 3 chosen weapons, however it had really slow IAS (Berserker Axe).
I also experimented with HoJ Phase Blade, but max dam was way too low.
How can I get more IAS for Famine? I really don't want to change the helm, because Holy Shock is useful since Conviction is my main aura.
I don't think that I should change the shield, since I have no points in Defiance and less in Holy Shield, meaning that my overall defence is really low. With eExile's Defiance I had around 20k defence with Holy Shield on.
I changed Dracul's for Laying of Hands, but IAS was still too slow.

2) Dexterity
I have very low AR. I don't want to use Angelic, since Mara is really needed to take advantage of the Resist Fire Lightning and Cold skills passive bonuses.
I also had low block rate because of Exile.
Should I just put a lot into Dexterity?

Merc:
I got a merc to counter the IAS problem.

First I tried act1 Fire merc with Faith Crusader Bow, eAndariel's Ral'd and Treachery rw.
I still did not get enough IAS.

Secondly, I'm intending to try act3 merc with Beast, Dream helmet and Pheonix shield.
Fanatiscm on Beast should give me some more IAS, Dream would add a lot of damage and Redemption would make sure that I wouldn't run out of Mana.
On the other hand, the fana aura on Beast is much lower than on Faith. Also, can act3 mercs use scepters, axes or hammers?

[commandwolf]

ias is really the big flaw in avengers. even with changing gears a lil, i don't think u will reach the next breakpoint. you will probably end up with two choices: dmg or speed. 6shael phase or famine zerker? ur choice

act2 mercs can only use polearms/spears

[FraterPerdurabo]

Ok... But there MUST be another way around...

By the way, that was a typo, I meant a3 merc.

[Ekizel`]

I thought redemption aura only worked for the person using it... If so, then your merc having the aura won't help your mana problem, you need to throw in some leech somewhere to counter the high mana cost

[FraterPerdurabo]

Redemption does work on a merc, it's a shared aura.

[The-Grim-Reaper]

grief phase blade.

vengeance takes all the "+dmg" and multiplies it with the ele dmg. =monstrous

it also solves ur speed problem bcuz u only need 55 ias to reach the highest bp. so get atleast 35 ias grief pb and get 20 more ias from somewhere.

[FraterPerdurabo]

That is awesome, I'll have to try that. I didn't know that Vengeance multiplies the +dam on Grief. Thanks, I had already dumped the idea of this build, but now I'll try again.

[ggkthx]

Redemption is for the user itself. Says in this site

http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/...ense.shtml