best bow?

[Attika]

>>> i play a rogue in sp mode<<<

For you, my Single-Player friend, the answer is easy.

The best bow for you is ..... Eaglehorn.

Why Eaglehorn? Simply because you are playing Single Player and Eaglehorn does decent damage, is findable, and -- best of all -- is indestructible.

There are a bunch of problems for playing Single-Player and trying to locate good bows.

Griswold won't sell you any prefix or suffix beyond qlevel 30, so no Merciless, Ruthless, Burning or Thunder there. That means you'll HAVE to trudge out to Wirt to check on ONE item and see if a.) it's a bow, b.) it's a bow of a decent base (say, not Short Bow or Hunter's Bow), c.) it has a good prefix (as per above) and d.) it has a good suffix (heavens, thunder, burning). Chances are low everything is going to fall together at exactly the right time. You may spend hours if not days if not WEEKS walking to Wirt, checking what he's selling, and then exiting and creating anew. I'm going to guess that you'd rather play the game than shop.

So, as a Single Player you now have two other options: find that bow in the dungeon or buy it at Griswolds.

Now Griswold CAN sell you a Swiftness bow, and he can also pair them up with the best prefix (Massive) that comes with that suffix. However, he'll only sell that specific pair of prefix/suffix when YOU have reached a certain character level. For buying a Massive/Swiftness bow, Gris will start selling you that bow when you reach clevel 19, and he'll STOP selling you that bow when you reach clevel 22. Since in playing to completion even ONE game of Single Player Diablo you'll hit clevel 25, you've probably already passed this level. If you haven't, it means you can now stop and begin shopping endlessly for that "perfect bow". Good luck. Should maybe take you only a few days of shopping trips. Maybe.

(Gris WILL sell you a Savage/Heavens bow as soon as you hit clevel 24, and will continue to do so throughout your further leveling. Same with +Resistance/ +damage bows.)

That means the best way to locate a good bow of Swiftness for you in Single Player will be to hunt it up in the dungeons. Try bosses on 8 and dungeon levels 9-11 in general -- that will be your best chance of locating em. Of course, for every new game you create, you'll be having to fight your way down to Caves via the Church entrance, since all the other entrances are sealed in Single Player until you find them via game play.

Want Merciless/Heavens from the dungeons? Uh oh, more bad news. The highest qlevel monster you can kill in the dungeon is qlevel 34, and the way qlevels of prefixes and suffixes are set up the best qlevel that can drop in the dungeon on either a prefix or suffix won't exceed that then. You won't be finding that Merciless/Burning bow in the dungeons at all. Only Wirt sells it. So it's back to shopping at Wirtmart for hours/days on end.

PLUS you realize that in playing Single Player, you must fight your way from the Church entrance to get to deeper levels? I mean, there is NO entrance to Caves or Hell in Single player until you walk through the dungeons and find it. So you need more money to buy that bow at Wirts? Start at Church and fight downward until you have enough cash, and pray you don't level up to an even clevel in the meantime so that he refreshes his item for sale. Tedious again.

Finally, there's that problem of money. I'm hoping you know how to change the difficulty setting from Normal to either Nightmare or Hell difficulty even though you are playing Single Player, yes? So more money can drop even in Church, yes? Because you'll find yourself going through bow durability pretty fast if you plan to use the bow as your primary weapon, and repairs are going to be expensive. Eventually you'll get to the point where you'll be either a.) running out of money and needing to start a new game to get more money to repair your mighty bow, b.) you've killed everything in the game and need to start a new game to continue playing. Well, in either case you'll be having to start in Church once again 'cause you're doing Single Player. You'll find it a long and expensive haul to get to Caves and Hell again (unless you've got Teleport spell, and even then....). That means you may be using a cheaper bow more often than your "good" bow in order to fight your way down to the levels where you can get enough cash to repair your better bow! So which bow then is really your "better" bow then?

Ok, so why Eaglehorn? A few reasons.

#1.) Easily findable. It's qlevel 26, can start dropping from chests on Hell 13 and from certain bosses even earlier.

#2.) It's got a decent base, and prefix and suffix both. It's base is a Long Battle Bow (decent max damage), and the +100% damage is like Massive, and the +20 Dex is like of Precision (the second best +Dex modifier that can appear on a bow) AND it is +50% to hit, which means you'll be nailing foes offscreen fairly frequently.

#3.) But best of all, it's indestructible. No worries about bow repairs. no worries about the cash for said bow repairs. And don't think you'll be finding Hidden Shrines for your Single Player bow -- only a few bows have a durability ending in "5" and unless you're playing Hellfire you won't be able to affect that durabity-ending number (Playing Hellfire? Cornerstone of the World, send bow to a warrior, have him fix it using his skill, hope he fixes it to a number ending in five, send it back). And Hidden Shrines have a tendancy to hit the item in your left hand (usually your shield slot), and they'll do that in great preference to other slots. Well, it you are trying to increase your bow's durability, and have that in your hands when you hit the Hidden Shrine, guess what object is going to take the -10 durability hit? The first game, almost a 100% chance it will be the bow. In further games, more like a 1/3 chance. But, then, you'll soon find yourself creating games just to search for Hidden Shrines. Is that what you want to be doing with your time in your Single Player games? Shrine hunting?

Now in MULTI-player games I'd be giving you a different answer. But you did state that you are a Single-Player rogue.


Now a question to you -- why aren't you playing Multi-player?


PS As far as the +Resistance/+damage bows, they'll be more common and findable/buyable. I just don't play them as a preference. I prefer bows that do more-damage-over-time as opposed to +resistance bows.