Grief is an oddity as far as weapons go; dealing immense amounts of damage but not via the usual route of “Enhanced Damage”, the stated damage on the weapon (and the character screen) will appear deceptively low. Instead, this weapon grants its damage via the “Damage +340 - 400” modifier, which, while not reported anywhere the player is likely to look, becomes quite evident during gameplay. On a fast weapon and if further boosted by other forms of “Enhanced Damage” (other gear, auras, mastery skills, etc.), Grief is one of the most powerful melee weapons in the game. This weapon also has the “Ignore Target’s Defense”, “Prevent Monster Heal”, “20% Deadly Strike”, “+30 - 40% Increased Attack Speed” and “Damage to Demons per Level” modifiers, further enhancing its already considerable utility.

Grief can be made in any five-socket sword or axe, and since it adds a flat amount of damage, the speed of said weapon is all-important, while the base damage is fairly irrelevant. This makes Phase Blades the base to shoot for, as they’re fast, can roll five sockets, and, as an added perk, are inherently indestructible, which will save you a lot of gold and bother.

Once you have the base weapon, you’ll need to insert the runes Eth + Tir + Lo + Mal + Ral, in order. Lo is easily the rarest and most expensive part of this runeword, and this makes Grief a fairly expensive weapon. On the plus side, a Grief Phase Blade is one of the best weapons a [Frenzy Barbarian] and [Smite Paladin] can get their hands on - especially since Grief is one of the few weapons that’ll actually increase the damage of Smite, due to its raw +Damage modifier. Unfortunately, there’s no good upgrade path to Lo, it takes two Ohm runes to create. You’re probably better off keeping those Ohm runes for other items, like Call to Arms. You’ll just have to get one via drop or trade… not like getting two Ohm runes is much more likely.