Weapons were not able to access the hand to hand skill until the release of the luclin client. Minor nitpick, but gharn's and wraps were 1hb till a month or so after luclin came out.

Also add me to wanting to make eye of zomm aggro again, at least before elder beads get put in. Eye pulling save so many corpse drags and resses for the pullers.

heh, I would be happy with 2 screaming maces at the moment :)

it was interesting the amount of monks who looted this and kept it in their banks... if i were a monk i'd have been "nah, don't even wanna loot that shit"

Thanks for the clarification NIH.

Yea sorry, didnt get back to this thread till just now :P

I'd use Abashi's and if you need, swap in a primal when buff wears off. That cast on it is AMAZING for pulling too.

I agree that the cast is very useful for pulling, but assuming you're not lazy, there are plenty of good craftable (and even a few purchasable if I remember right) throwing weapons that work as well. In fact, once abashi is nerfed to 4 sec from instant, it really losses a lot of it's utility in certain situations.

Are you sure it was nerfed during Velious era? (psst, say no) :D

Ok third edit of this post:

When it first dropped it was a melee-triggered proc instant cast, then it got nerfed to a 3s clicky with unlimited charges very soon afterwards.

Which is more like a buff IMO for monk pullers. And 3s is perfectly fine for pulling, it has 250 range... ever use the bio orb? That had a cast time too, you still used it though..

You sure? I'm almost positive it's 4 second cast as of like a year ago when I last logged on my live monk. I'm not denying it's usefulness, just saying that I think throwing weapons are more useful in a number of situations (i.e. reaggroing mobs that don't split how you want them or what not). Fish darts have a 225 range if I remember right, and there are a number of javalin's that are either 210 or 250 (can't remember). Given that information, I think the bio orb is pretty useless and semi-dangerous given it's a 5 second cast time, only 200 range and has a very slight chance of sending the mob running.

Regardless, not trying to say that abashi's is anything less than amazing.. just playing devil's advocate :P

Edit: I guess I could be wrong. Everything I'm reading says 3.0 seconds... don't know why I thought 4. w/e

Edit 2: Oh and before you bring up the no-damage aspect of both the bio orb and abashi's in relation to summoning.. I agree that it is a nice aspect, but if I remember right, most throwing weapons don't break the threshold for summoning anyway, which makes that kind of a moot point.. which is why I didn't bring it up.