CorwinBrute's guide to the LoD Bowazon

[Occhidiangela]

1. In your dexterity Discussion, you need to switch two numbers.

"the mere 100 additional DR a 400 Dex score would give is completely insignificant."

Change to read: "the mere 400 additional DR a 100 Dex score would give is completely insignificant."

Then consider the 800 Additional DR a 200 Dex score yields . . . you are still probably right. :)

2. Ice Arrow Freeze duration (and the Pierce skill) keeps going up and is a very good way to approach the. 5.8 seconds (2.9/1.45) at level 20 and 6.6 (3.3/1.65) at level 24 are tactically useful in Hell if Pierce keeps working as it does now. Just my two bits on that one, from a variant perspective. :) I realize that the FA and EyE combination has been a standard for a long time. :) IA and Eye would be fine, it just takes a bit more work and reliance on Piercing "in a line."

3. In regards to Crushing Blow. "It doesn’t scale with the number of players in the game (I think ?)"

Yes it does. As the monster's life goes up, so does the '12.5 % remaining' go up. CB is based on the monster's damage in-situ. I think it adds a decent accelerator to monster death in high player count games.

4. You comment on the Lore Runeword seems to have overlooked the +1 skills combined with 30% Lightning resistance and at least the nominal - 7 Damage can't hurt in NM and normal difficulties on those rare occasions when the 'Tao' using Bowazon gets hit.

5. NM resist penalty is now 50%, IIRC. (Walkthrough section.)

Again, nice work.

Item Comment: In Acts II and III up to V in Normal, a three socketed Composite Bow with Three Perfect Gems, or Better Yet, Three Runes (Like Three Ral, Tal, or Ort) can go a long way to speeding up Monster Death. Three perfect Sapphires boosts cold duration. I like to give my Act I Rogue, after she is fifth level, two flawed amethysts and a chipped or flawed sapphire. YMMV. The other option is to put three Ith runes in for a whopping +27 to max damage, however, that may take a bit of luck, twinking, and some cubing to get there.

Act III revisited: I have found that act III is one of the easiest places to go through for a bowazon in Normal if you use sockets and have a bit of luck with gem drops and using a bit of cubing to boost the value of the gems. :)