Quote:Cryst a Lion! said: Well, as a theoretician I have to disagree almost completely.
Well, although I would claim to be at least as theoretical as almost anyone you may care to put me up against (with the likely exception of yourself), as a practical player I have to disagree with your almost complete disagreement.
I've played a couple of untwinked bowazons through to the end of the game in 1.10 (one in the beta, which may not entirely count), and the physical damage from the bows I found was -- to put it charitably -- completely useless. Perhaps it would be different if you had exactly the right bows avaialable to twink your character with, or you were lucky enough to find a cruel/elite level damage bow just playing through the game.
That's one reason why I think maxing an elemental attack is useful for a bowazon -- apart from it's permanent use vs PIs, it will be your primary attack for your first run through the game, since the da depends on skill lvl (which you can control), not weapon da (which you can't, unless you twink -- not that's there's anything wrong with that). Even with amp da, say, you need a high da bow. (I have used a wws in hell diff, for example, and it was just painfuly slow, even in solo games.)
This is utterly different from previous versions, where ms/strafe would take a bowazon through the whole game, and elemental attacks only became of any real significance when you hit PIs in hell diff.
IMO, 1.10 massively tipped the balance from physical da for characters with average equipment to spells (and then only spells that have massive da returns at high lvls), and made high-end items almost a necessity for characters that depend on physical da (an unfortunate corollary of the enormously overpowered da of a few of the high-end weapons).