Bowazon build

[TheKingofKewl]

I looked over some of the build guides at the Basin. ALso some debates why some thought strafe wasn't as useful as FA when built up and if it was better to make FA then Ice Arrow.

I need some criticism and pointers I think before I go full force on this new 'Zon I'm making.

Cold arrow Max
Freeze arrow - single point

To keep mana costs down and achieve higher damage.

Valkerye 17
Gets war pike at this level and any further abilities and perks I will look at as getting from skill items and possible future torches.

Dodge 1, Evade 1, Avoid 1
better defense, skill items can as well further boost usefulness without further points.
Critical Strike 1 or 2 points, as above.

Pierce 10 - 15 points as it seems to be worth it.
magic arrow, possible primary attack 1 point

strafe possibley max, if used
penetrate 1 to 5 points


I don't know where else to spend these points or where to take away, I would like a powerful build. Any advice is welcome. Thanks

[Occhidiangela]

I looked over some of the build guides at the Basin. ALso some debates why some thought strafe wasn't as useful as FA when built up and if it was better to make FA then Ice Arrow.

Cold arrow Max
Freeze arrow  - single point
To keep mana costs down and achieve higher damage.

Valkerye  17
Gets war pike at this level and any further abilities and perks I will look at as getting from skill items and possible future torches.

Dodge 1, Evade 1, Avoid 1 
Critical Strike 1 or 2 points, as above.

Pierce 10 - 15 points as it seems to be worth it.

magic arrow, possible primary attack 1 point

strafe  possibley max, if used
penetrate 1 to 5 points
I don't know where else to spend these points or where to take away, I would like a powerful build. Any advice is welcome. Thanks
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What kind of merc did you intend on hiring?

Might merc helps Strafe damage bonus, of course, Act III Lightning Merc could improve your elemental balance.

For a weapon switch, W II, consider a wand with charges of Lower Resist. Handy assistance for Freezing Arrow.

Food for thought. For a 4 point investment, you double your Freezing Arrow damage. The problem in Hell Difficulty, I have found, is that even with Freezing Arrow and Cold Arrow Maxed, monster regen and HP make FA take quite a while to kill things. Something to stop Regen, be it Open Wounds, PMH (yay) or a Poison Charm with a decent duration, is handy.

As far as Penetrate and Pierce: +skills would probably take care of you, Pierce wise, if you invested 10 points into Pierce. If you have really good + Skills equipment luck, maybe less. The diminishing returns seems to start around slvl 10. If you end up with about 5 points in + Amazon skills, the Amazon Bow you end up with, etcetera, you are sniping at the margins in terms of Pierce percentags. A +3 Bow Skills pair of gloves or +3 Passive Skills gloves would be sweet. :) With the volume of fire you'll be putting out, why not look at

Inner Sight as an alternative to extra points in Penetrate?

Add points to Inner Sight, rather than Penetrate, and you decrease target defense rather than increase your AR, but still improve your % to hit. That boost also helps your Merc hit better, if you use an Act II or Act V merc. If you have an Act I merc, her Inner Sight will do well enough for the both of you. If you use Act III merc, AR is basically irrelevant.

Your Valk's attacks? Assisted by -DR. Any party Members as well.

If you concern is PvP in the end game, Penetrate probably meets your needs better than Inner Sight. (Not sure if a Strafezon is a good PvP build, guessing no.)

Inner Sight yields -40 DR to -60 DR at slvl 6 to -305 DR at slvl 10. Won't hurt.

Chance to Hit: 100 * AR / (AR + DR) * 2 * alvl / (alvl + dlvl)
AR = Attack Rating; alvl = Level of Attacker; dlvl = Level of Defender.

For me, the formula is a bit clearer with another set of parens to show the basic calc modified by the mlvl differential.
% Chance to hit = (100*AR/(AR+DR))*(2*alvl/(alvl+dlvl))
(The significant benefits of Inner Sight, of course are at very high levels slvl 20 -815 to DR, at 24 -1095.)
Depending on how significantly you ratchet up your AR . . . -DR could be of use.

My two cents. Not sure if I covered any ground you had not already considered.

Occhi

[TheKingofKewl]

wow thanks :-) i made some new changes to my build based on this!

What kind of merc did you intend on hiring? 

Might merc helps Strafe damage bonus, of course, Act III Lightning Merc could improve your elemental balance.

For a weapon switch, W II, consider a wand with charges of Lower Resist.  Handy assistance for Freezing Arrow. 

+skills would probably take care of you, Pierce wise, if you invested 10 points into Pierce.  If you have really good + Skills equipment luck, maybe less.  The diminishing returns seems to start around slvl 10.  If you end up with about 5 points in + Amazon skills, the Amazon Bow you end up with, etcetera, you are sniping at the margins in terms of Pierce percentags.  A +3 Bow Skills pair of gloves or +3 Passive Skills gloves would be sweet. :) With the volume of fire you'll be putting out, why not  look at

Inner Sight as an alternative to extra points in Penetrate?

Add points to Inner Sight, rather than Penetrate, and you decrease target defense rather than increase your AR, but still improve your % to hit.  That boost also helps your Merc hit better, if you use an Act II or Act V merc.  If you have an Act I merc, her Inner Sight will do well enough for the both of you.  If you use Act III merc, AR is basically irrelevant. 

Your Valk's attacks?  Assisted by -DR.  Any party Members as well.

If you concern is PvP in the end game, Penetrate probably meets your needs better than Inner Sight.  (Not sure if a Strafezon is a good PvP build, guessing no.)

Inner Sight yields -40 DR to -60 DR at slvl 6 to -305  DR at slvl 10.  Won't hurt.

Chance to Hit: 100 * AR / (AR + DR) * 2 * alvl / (alvl + dlvl)
AR = Attack Rating; alvl = Level of Attacker; dlvl = Level of Defender.

For me, the formula is a bit clearer with another set of parens to show the basic calc modified by the mlvl differential.
% Chance to hit = (100*AR/(AR+DR))*(2*alvl/(alvl+dlvl))
(The significant benefits of Inner Sight, of course are at very high levels slvl 20 -815 to DR, at 24 -1095.)
Depending on how significantly you ratchet up your AR . . . -DR could be of use.

My two cents. Not sure if I covered any ground you had not already considered.

Occhi
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[Occhidiangela]

Wow thanks :-) i made some new changes to my build based on this!
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Best of luck, let us know how it works out. :D

Occhi

[librarian]

Heiho,

the AR issue is a difficult thing, as I've learnt here.

Let's try a different approach.

With Penetrate, your AR directly gets a decent boost. This is necessary to hit with the actual arrow. The splash of Freezing Arrow is not AR dependent, but since 1.10 the Pierce function is. You will gain essentially more damage with a good Piercing Chance and wise tactical positional play aka herding, so long as your Chance to Hit roll allows the actual arrow to hit.
Note that a successful piercing attack can dependent on missile range hit up to five enemies. Thus in best case scenario you will trigger the splash five times instead of one time. If the enemies are tightly packed, each of them will take colddamage from more than one splash cloud.

I refer more to Penetrate than to Inner Sight, just because I basically think Inner Sight is more useful in melee because of its poor range. Also it has to be casted, whereas Pene works passively. You'll loose time while waiting for the enemies to come close enough, you'll loose again time while casting, and because the casting of an amazon is somewhat tricky with weapon dependency and Action Flags in casting animation you could even loose more time because your spell is interrupted and you have to cast again.

With ranged Amazons, I always prefer Pene. It's just enough time intensive to put your Decoy onto the right place. IS is a neat effect especially in Dungeons for illuminating enemies, but I wouldn't go for it because of AR issues.
As said above, melee Amazon is another kind of peanut.

Regarding Wand with LR charges:
same thing for casting problems as above, plus you have to switch.
Personally I don't like that crossclass business much. Along with Strafe and FA there should only an occasional boss resist both attacks. Also you can forget the idea to negate immunities with that, because most cold immune monsters have cold resistance too high to be negated. For dealing out more damage to everything other than cold immunes I'd prefer positional play :-)

Because it's not mentioned already, I'd go for the 400dex mark, even with Strafe. With crappy gear 350, but that's the least amount I'd allow myself.

[Occhidiangela]

Heiho,
here.

With Penetrate, your AR directly gets a decent boost. This is necessary to hit with the actual arrow. The splash of Freezing Arrow is not AR dependent, but since 1.10 the Pierce function is. You will gain essentially more damage with a good Piercing Chance and wise tactical positional play aka herding, so long as your Chance to Hit roll allows the actual arrow to hit.

I refer more to Penetrate than to Inner Sight, just because I basically think Inner Sight is more useful in melee because of its poor range.   Also it has to be casted, whereas Pene works passively.   You'll loose time while waiting for the enemies to come close enough, you'll loose again time while casting, and because the casting of an amazon is somewhat tricky with weapon dependency and Action Flags in casting animation you could even loose more time because your spell is interrupted and you have to cast again.

With ranged Amazons, I always prefer Pene. It's just enough time intensive to put your Decoy onto the right place. IS is a neat effect especially in Dungeons for illuminating enemies, but I wouldn't go for it because of AR issues.
As said above, melee Amazon is another kind of peanut.

Regarding Wand with LR charges:
same thing for casting problems as above, plus you have to switch.
Personally I don't like that crossclass business much. Along with Strafe and FA there should only an occasional boss resist both attacks. Also you can forget the idea to negate immunities with that, because most cold immune monsters have cold resistance too high to be negated. For dealing out more damage to everything other than cold immunes I'd prefer positional play :-)

Because it's not mentioned already, I'd go for the 400dex mark, even with Strafe. With crappy gear 350, but that's the least amount I'd allow myself.
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Some good points. The LR was simply to jack up the Cold Damage, not with an idea to break resists, for the reason you provided.

I neglected to mention the casting issue, which is not that important. But that depends on play style, so good thing to mention it.

I hadn't thought about the Pierce AR requirements, good points, thanks. :D

As to Iner Sight's range: do you mean the spell radius (fixed at 13.3) or the range you can hit a target with? With the muscle valk Kewl was positing, I figured that between Decoy and Valk and a Merc, the monsters would tend to swarm and make for a decent pile to IS, however, each tactical situation would influence that.

Another risk of using Inner Sight is that in constricted areas with a lot of obstacles like Pillars, casting may be blocked depending on the angle.

350 Dex? Wow, I am not familiar with a build that goes there. I tend to budget my builds for whatever points I can manage up to levels 75-85. Heading into the 90's does change that perspective, with 50 more points to mess with.

Occhi

[librarian]

Heiho,

>> As to Inner Sight's range: do you mean the spell radius (fixed at 13.3) or the range you can hit a target with? <<

AFAIK you can't target IS, it will always apply its radius around the casting Amazon. If you've got contrary information feel free to link me to it. My statement regarding the usefulness of IS with ranged attacks is based on that, and my eyesight in the game matches. I've never encountered IS-'cursed' monsters from offscreen even with mousepointer at screen edge while casting.

So, to make sure one has a good Chance to Hit one'll have to wait for the swarming you mentioned. Well, along with my idea of herding one will have to wait for a good position anyway, but with IS there is the step of casting when with Pene one can already have a good shootout.

350dex:
at very least! I see a not so overpowered attack with an one-point FA like Kewl described. So the physical part is not secondary attack but has equal rights to FA in terms of damage. With maxStrafe there is equivalence of additional 100dex (well, offweaponED) pushing it to 450 in terms of physical damage. Still the arrows (all arrows) have to hit, and dex helps a lot. A mighty guy from act2/Nightmare will add up offweapon damage to about 200%, when fully grown. The sum is equivalent to 650dex and comes in range of 'powerful build' with most of the exceptional unique bows. Truly powerful physical bowie builds are designed to go well over 550dex _and_ a mighty guy _and_ lots of Critical _and_ as much maxdam in inventory as possible. But this needs quite a treasure in terms of trading. I have still somewhere a screenie around with an (unmodded!) 700dex Zon oO (not mine, sadly ...).

BTW I don't see the point in castrating both attacks, one by don't max out one skill (FA) and the other by stating low dex and - after rereading the initial posting - tossing Critical Strike aside.

BTW2 a table with CA/FA damage in relation can be found in sucinum's (german) Java Guide, it's in the Appendix.
Another nice tool is the indiablo.de Skill Calculator.

I have still an Immolation/Strafe hybrid at start with an unupped Witchwild String as physical weapon. She has just hit the 350dex mark at cLvl80, with around 40 points spare. True, she has very low life according to her gear, which is more caster related (to push Immo damage more than physical). With Strafe sLvl16 she needs quite a bit time to bring fire immunes down even when playing alone. That with a bow giving her a high chance of double damage, nonladder (ie weaker monsters), and no mighty helper from act2. Some points in strength aside she is dex-as-dex-can. Maybe the spare points wander into vitality, because encountering BigD in Hell with only some 420life could become tricky. Mind, I wouldn't try that in HC ;-)

True, a Windforce or an Eagle would boost damage insanely because of maxdam/cLvl, but she would need almost all spare points in strength to wear even the Eagle and far more to wear WF. Going that way would in consequence mean to skip the Immolation route, because everything useful for more physical damage isn't useful for Immo.
Besides, I don't have a WF, and my only Eagle is in thoughtful use by some Rogue companion of another char :-)

[Occhidiangela]

350dex:
at very least!

With maxStrafe there is equivalence of additional 100dex (well, offweaponED) pushing it to 450 in terms of physical damage. Still the arrows (all arrows) have to hit, and dex helps a lot.&nbsp;

A mighty guy from act2/Nightmare will add up offweapon damage to about 200%, when fully grown.

The sum is equivalent to 650dex and comes in range of 'powerful build' with most of the exceptional unique bows.&nbsp;

Truly powerful physical bowie builds are designed to go well over 550dex _and_ a mighty guy _and_ lots of Critical _and_ as much maxdam in inventory as possible. But this needs quite a treasure in terms of trading.

With Strafe sLvl16 she needs quite a bit time to bring fire immunes down even when playing alone.&nbsp; That with a bow giving her a high chance of double damage, nonladder (ie weaker monsters), and no mighty helper from act2. Some points in strength aside she is dex-as-dex-can.

Mind, I wouldn't try that in HC ;-)
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Good points all, I think you are right about IS.

Strafe hits off screen? I thought it stopped doing that in LoD, my error.

My experiences with FA are that maxed FA and maxed Cold Arrow still won't overwhelm monsters in Hell difficulty. It takes a lot of Mana. But he want a pumped up Amazon, so the skill points have to come from somewhere.

Between Strength and a bit of Vit, and HC considerations, the all dex builds never appealed to me.

700 Dex? Do you mean "effective dex" based on aura enhancements? Even if I added 89x5 points of dex, and pumped up no other stat (by clvl 90) I'd only be ablt to add 445 points of Dex. (And bloody eff all for health.) Add 25 from clvl 1 and you get 470 points of Dex.

Thanks again, I re learned a few bits. Teach old dog old tricks . . .

Occhi
Occhi

[librarian]

Heiho,

>>
Strafe hits off screen? I thought it stopped doing that in LoD, my error.
<<
it does, even it maybe is quite useless offscreen, because most monsters coming from offscreen won't run straight into the arrows. But 13.3yd radius is poor IMHO even onscreen. IS doesn't work on oncoming monsters then, which means more waitin time for the cast, more time wasted.



>>
700 Dex? Do you mean "effective dex" based on aura enhancements?
<<

70kB:
found it :-)
Note that the aura isn't activated yet. According to my infos the bow was WWS and the rest gear D2C stuff, and yes, beetle was indeed HC oO.
Dexonly back in 1.09 didn't equal always 'highest possible damage', because you gave lots of damage away, with too low strength to wear raw damage equip like War Travelers.

In 1.10, along with Annihilus, Torch and Uber Uber gear like Fortitude, and with very patient trading and gambling barbMa made another dexonly:
http://forum2.ingame.de/diablo2/showthread...threadid=949677
and Paulus:
http://forum2.ingame.de/diablo2/showthread...threadid=695056
(I hope the pics are still uploaded, because the german text won't help anyone here I assume)
both at 9fpa and heavy relying on items including maxdam/arfe charms. The average player (say, me) can't reach up to that sky. My physical bowie chars got native dex up to about 500 when being amazon class and about 450 with Necro and Hunter Druid. I loose instantly interest in my chars when they've smashed Baal/Hell, which used to happen around cLvl80 in 1.09 and cLvl87 in 1.1x.

<edit>
oops I just have reread that Paulus achieved 8fpa resp 2fpa Strafe.

And IIRC beetle started his Zon with LoD, the screenshot obviously was made a lot later. This means along with WWS and CS/skill he quadrupeled physical damage while actually playing before 1.09
</edit>

[Occhidiangela]

both at 9fpa and heavy relying on items including maxdam/arfe charms. The average player (say, me) can't reach up to that sky. My physical bowie chars got native dex up to about 500 when being amazon class and about 450 with Necro and Hunter Druid. I loose instantly interest in my chars when they've smashed Baal/Hell, which used to happen around cLvl80 in 1.09 and cLvl87 in 1.1x.
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OK, to 650 at level 89. ;) Those last 10 levels are in the Grinding zone, well done to get to 99. That's persistence! :w00t:

Occhi