Effective Amazon Build

[JustAGuy]

Last night, I found Lycander's Aim. It's a nice piece of equipment, and I was wondering if it's good enough to actually start a ladder Amazon with.

See, my last Amazon was using a Blastbark Gothic Bow (upgraded) and stoped being effective at around act 5 nightmare. Once I entered Hell, she became completely unable to kill anything. When I say "completely unable to kill anything" I mean "completely unable to kill anything".

Her main skill was Strafe and her main elemental skill was Freezing Arrow. It took way too much mana and time to kill non-cold immunes, and cold immunes were healing so fast that my little strafe was doing practically no damage.

So, with that previous experience in mind, I'm a bit weary to start a new Amazon using this new Lycander's Aim (which seems to be 100x better than my little Blastbark).

The high mana consumption of Freezing Arrow doesn't seem to be a viable way to handle Physical Immunes, and I can't seem to get enough damage via the Amazon's main physical damage skills to handle non-physical immunes -- what to do? I play in 5 player games; with that amount of players, I'd like to be able to kill SOMETHING in Hell mode...

Any suggestions? What kind of builds do you find most effective for an Amazon?

[moget?]

Hi,

I have yet to try any ladder amazons, but do have an idea that could help you with physical immunes: magic arrow. This lowly skill has recieved some much needed boni from the patch, namely the new conversion to magical damage. The skill now converts a percent of your damage into pure magic damage (!). This percent is equal to the skill level of magic arrow. For example, level 19 magic arrow converts 19% damage to magic.

Ah yes, and the benifits are twofold! Magic arrow indeed has another great attribute: mana cost! As you invest in this tasty skill, the mana cost actually goes down! Costing a mere 1.5 mana at level one, it eventually costs zero mana at level 13! No longer shall you be a slave to mana potions!

Some other notable goodies: Attack rating boni are excellent, and the skill is quite useful when you run out of arrows... :P

I'm not an expert, but methinks this should work. :D

--moget?

[Caaroid]

Morget?'s suggestion seems worthy of consideration. My answer is simpler: NO
There is no hell-viable amazon builds out there, if you mean (viable=kills only significantly slower than other classes).

Ok, I bet if you have windforce and 160/60 armors and everything you're ok, but my 200+dex burizon with a 108% enh. dam. armor has trouble killing things in a 3 player game.

Ah well. Maybe I am just a shabby player. An elite Lycanders would be better than a buriza in many respects, so who knows.

[Archon_Wing]

Silly question, but what level are you?

You could always carry mana charms to support freezing arrow. If you really can't try ice arrow, seriously.

[Crystalion]

There is no hell-viable amazon builds out there, if you mean (viable=kills only significantly slower than other classes).

Well, I'm no expert either, having only had a master-of-hell zon (bowie) in v1.09, and only norm/nm zons in v1.10.

But a quick "statistical" check of the ladder listings, for ladder hc/sc v1.10 uswest, clearly shows that zons are not the "bottom of the barrel" of classes at all.

It is also the case that a Multishot or Strafe Zon is one of the biggest beneficiaries of any build when you have an Enchantress around. (or slvl 1 exploding arrow with a high level of piercing).

If you're only considering zon builds for solo play, however, then the only massive damage output skills are either item dependent, or jav skills, afaik.

If I were trying to "update" my v1.09 bowie, I'd consider all the things I used to look for in item damage/effects (large list omitted, but I favor chill/slow, knockback etc.), plus PMH, plus Delirium helm. I'd also toy with crushing blow and Lifetap (charges--now works on ranged attacks, possibly buggy, but in favor of the player if so).

And don't forget that a focus on valk/decoy skill points in v1.10 results in uber valk tanks (if they aren't poisoned, they are virtually indestructible).

I would think the Amazon Basin would be a good place to look for info on this topic.

[JustAGuy]

Level as in player level, or character level? My last Amazon was retired at character level 57ish when she stopped being able to kill anything in a nightmare act 5 game (4 players). I took her to hell act 1, just to see, and she couldn't do a thing.

As for player level, I like to think I'm pretty good at the game despite my being clobbered repeatedly by a pack of gloams on the realm today with my orb sorceress. Damn gloams.

From the suggestions in this thread, it sounds as though the Amazon has gotten the ol' shaft from the patch. Same goes for any melee build, really. The only builds that I see roaming hell are support Paladins (Conviction) joined by Orb and Meteor sorceresses, along with Trap Assassins, and sometimes Hammerdins (practically a different class from regular Paladins). Poor old Druid is left out in the cold too. Elemental is the way to go, I suppose.

I'm going to test out the Lycander's aim offline, and see how that pans out (those beta character files that were available for download from Diabloii.net that were blank in 1.10s are working ok in 1.10 single player).

I'm waiting for a Guardian Angel and a Lightsabre or Azurewrath before I attempt Hell with a melee Paladin again. Poor bugger couldn't swat a fly in Hell mode. I might try a Hammerdin again as well, now that I have better gear.

[Thecla]

Well, there's a couple of separate issues here. If you want to solo with a bowazon in 5-8 player games, I can't help you there (physical damage was effectively nerfed in 1.10 -- and, at any rate, for multishot bowazons it really needed to be -- and the damage of a bowazon's elemental attacks is additive with skill level, so they can never do the massive damage of some of the other spell attackers). Perhaps some uber-equipment options will do the job, but I don't know about that (certainly prevent monster heal should help). But this isn't what you were supposed to do in 1.10 anyway, hammerdins and meteor sorceresses notwithstanding.

On the other hand, if you want to solo 1-3 player games, or party in higher player games, bowazons still do just fine. Especially because -- even if their damage output isn't the highest any more -- a high lvl valk + decoy gives them some of the best monster control skills in the game. I haven't tried out a lycander's in 1.10, but I would guess it's still a very nice bow (a bit low on damage maybe, but with great +skills to make up for it).

My own recipe for a decent, go-anywhere 1.10 bowazon is to max out an elemental attack (fa or immo, with as much of the +da synergy as you can afford), max valk with a few points into decoy, add half-a-dozen points or so into multishot or strafe, the rest to passives, and get a good high da bow (I think lycanders should work well).

[Crystalion]

Thecla said:

physical damage was effectively nerfed in 1.10

and JustAGuy said:

the Amazon has gotten the ol' shaft from the patch. Same goes for any melee build, really.

Well, as a theoretician I have to disagree almost completely.

Please note that we aren't discussing the importance of Crowd Control or issues of survivability. This is purely a comment focused on v1.10 vs v1.09 physical damage (actually any version with 50% global hell physical).

There are fewer phys immunes now. Anything that isn't phys immune is utterly owned, phys resistwise, by ampdamage or even decrep.

Yes, they bumped the HPs of the monsters. Crushing blow doesn't care (and works ranged, albeit at half effectiveness, and vs. bosses, ditto).

Yes the monster increased HPs is also horrific vis a vis regen... stop the regen! (PMH, OW, poison). You have many options here. But you ignore this issue at your peril. (creepy background music goes here ;) )

Physical damage is king in v1.10

--Ferengi; this is a way of summing this up. This situation is why thev 1.10 necro skelie armies *work* in hell difficulty (their longevity would not matter, if their physical damage, supported by ampdam to break immunes to 80%, wasn't effective).

Furthermore, Lifetap now works ranged. (indeed for ranged *throwing* weapons, it appears bugged--ymmv--in the player's favor). Lifetap doesn't care about the nm/hell or monster leech nerfs. Only high physical resistance messes with the uberness of Lifetap for melee/ranged characters.

Perhaps the client/server desync mess-ups (WW, Zeal, Fury, etc.) have obscured this new reality, or perhaps players are too "young" to remember that major adjustments are required for builds/equip when new versions come out (like when my iceblink Paly was nerfed to hell, long long ago--not that he didn't deserve nerfing :D )

edit: now that I've edited the hell out of this to fix the forum weirdness with quoting, I should add that I understand that v1.10 is "tougher", in that it still takes more physical damage output to kill monsters. But you can get it with better weapons and better skills (synergized or otherwise improved) in many cases. Builds that don't rely on Physical damage are, imo, far more likely to run into uncrackable monsters (except, perhaps, Paladins, with Conviction, Vengence, Sanctuary and Blessed Hammer tricks to defeat immunes). It should be noted here that lots of the "common" physical immunes have very low HPs, so zon, assassin, barb, paly phys=>elemental skills should do the trick quite well... this leaves phys fury druids out in the cold, but they *could* have done a little fire claws, rabies, armageddon, etc., if they really object to having an elemental weapon handy).

[whyBish]

The skill now converts a percent of your damage into pure magic damage (!).

Huh?

Even at max, and assuming a softcore level of dex and a big™ bow you would be struggling to pull off more than 100 magical damage per shot average, compared to FA doing 1k per shot + splash + freeze?



As to effective zons, if you are not going to party (with an enchantress) then I would suggest a LF/Charged Strike Zon. No problems killing (non-lit-immune) monsters fast even to hell a5, has no special gear reqs to be effective (although obviously certain items are very helpful), and she can stay at range behind a valk and hireling if the going gets too tough to use charged strike (a3 cold merc is very helpful, since you can take down a cold immune monster fast, and the cold merc can freeze/dmg the lit immunes for you).

Got to 82 in HC with this build, very livable (only died when returning to help in durance, OHK to a single normal doll explosion, had high DAE, max block, and ~1k life :blink: )

Also, perhaps your level was about ~10(?) too low for hell? (Although lvling wouldn't increase your physical damage much other than better CTH)

[Thecla]

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).

[Crystalion]

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.

Yes indeed.

I have very good damage blue and yellow bows just rotting in my mules. I also have Goldstrike, Buriza, Demon Machine and various lesser bows that have all dropped either for me or players 2 (I often play with a partner). Trading for good bows is usually cheap (v1.10 brought back a reasonable trade economy). Bear in mind that, in v1.10, these can all be upgraded to elite (the yellows and golds, not the blues).

I almost bought a Blood Raven's bow just because, at the Lum asking price, it is so pathetically cheap I feel sorry for the poor thing.

This is all ladder, btw.

The elite spears available cheaply boggle the mind. I find myself wanting to buy them for my merc, and I don't even *have* an act2 merc. (Again, this isn't a dupe economy, this is a MF economy).

I understand Hardcore is a tougher proposition.

Still, if you understand either trading or MF, you no longer need to be a meph run fanatic in v1.10 to get good gear. That is, it drops all over the place. Including "easy" parts of act 1 Hell.

This is without even considering getting cruels by cubing (bear in mind the equity in v1.10: all weapons get the gem reroll recipes, not just swords).

As long as you have PMH and that high damage bow (and Shaels are easy to get to make it sufficiently speedy) then Multishot and Strafe can now really do a number for you, in terms of damage output.

Of course, without PMH you're hosed.

With PMH and some sort of effective crowd control (how anyone could pass up having an uber Valk is beyond me... this is one of the most extreme favors done to players for v1.10) you are at least at v1.09 levels, because you won't get stalled very often by physical immunity. With crushing blow and Lifetap working ranged, you're really cooking. Enchanted you are a GODDESS.

Also v1.10 brings a number of very effective runewords within reach of ordinary mortals (via Countess, Hellforge, trading). Some of these strike me as very good for zon builds (thankfully they nerfed Delirium pre-release so that it isn't so overpowered as to be mandatory act 1/2/5 merc gear, but if you don't consider it for a bowazon you're passing up a huge bet, in hell).

In fact, if it weren't for the faster monster AI and silly numbers of boss/champ packs (a great rush for sc players, a pain in the behind for hc, I'm sure), I'd be hard pressed to reject monster complaints that the players have gotten too powerful.

...

However, if you don't like needing to grok all the new added item complexities, or you play Classic, then I'd have to agree, many physical skills were "nerfed" in that light (only). I think this is a boon for classic, actually, because it means you can get, in softcore, a lot of the challenge and coop play (in hell) that you'd be forced into hardcore for in LoD. It does, however, mean that the new synergized skills for classic non-physical builds have boosted their relative effectiveness tremendously.

[Casperi]

Level as in player level, or character level? My last Amazon was retired at character level 57ish when she stopped being able to kill anything in a nightmare act 5 game (4 players). I took her to hell act 1, just to see, and she couldn't do a thing.

Level 57 is _way_ too young to be going to hell mode, imho. I usually stay in nightmare until level 70. Some players I know wait until at least 75 before moving on.

[vor_lord]

Level as in player level, or character level? My last Amazon was retired at character level 57ish when she stopped being able to kill anything in a nightmare act 5 game (4 players). I took her to hell act 1, just to see, and she couldn't do a thing.

Level 57 is _way_ too young to be going to hell mode, imho. I usually stay in nightmare until level 70. Some players I know wait until at least 75 before moving on.

I'll second that. I took my taunt/frenzy barb into Hell at lvl 64, and he _struggled_. I thought melee builds were hopelessly ruined. I pinned my hopes on crescent moon, and yet when I finally made one it didn't seem to help much. I felt I was relegated to being a battle orders monkey as I couldn't kill anything.

Now that he is 79, last night he was quite effective in Act IV (I also now have a pair of decent weapons). The difference is that I actually hit now. Strafe will suffer mightily if your chance to hit is low. I'm not trying to say that melee isn't tough, particularly in no-twink, or that you'll be as fast at killing as a trapasin or hammerdin, but I think that a bowazon can be _viable_.

Too bad I wasn't the recipient of the Eaglehorn that dropped for us last night <_<

I'll have to stick to my plans to build a witchyzon. With enough crushing blow, PMH, and amp damage, along with strafe's new minimum number of arrows, I think such a build will be at least viable.

[niomosy]

Absolutely. My 1.10 characters have waited until they were in their 70's before moving to Hell. No really good reason to bother moving until then, especially with good exp from Baal runs.

[Epi]

But a quick "statistical" check of the ladder listings, for ladder hc/sc v1.10 uswest, clearly shows that zons are not the "bottom of the barrel" of classes at all.

Sorry for pointing out an obvious thing, but ladder listing does not take into account 'zon specialization. And Lightning Fure still owns everything non-LI in 1.10, even with cracked javelins. ;)

(Well, this thread does not specifically mention "bowazon", but looks like all posters means bow-using amazon in their posts.)

[Caaroid]

and the best part is: they work together!

then again, you can't really use a Lycander's bow for that, so it's out of the question

[Crystalion]

Sorry for pointing out an obvious thing, but ladder listing does not take into account 'zon specialization. And Lightning Fure still owns everything non-LI in 1.10, even with cracked javelins. ;)

So your theory is that 200+ clvl 90+ zons on hardcore uswest ladder are all Lightning Fury specialists?

Even if that is the case, which I doubt strongly, getting to that clvl (90..96) is rather difficult killing only bovines (I'm not saying it can't be done, just that I don't believe that explains 200+ people) because of the xp nerf when a monster is more than 5 levels below you (Hell Bovines are apparently mlvl 81).

So I rather suspect that LF zons are "hell capable" enough to pass muster (i.e. I'm sure many other classes are jealous of zons, with reason).

While I would tend to accept any argument that most of the top 200 folks listed for a class on ladder have very good equipment (if they need to, at least) I see no reason to suppose that all 200 folks so listed are using the same build style for their class. I would be amazed indeed if there weren't at least four radically different zon builds in that mix.

Again, however, as much as I like the LL, the AB is far more likely to be providing better "first hand" info on this topic.

p.s. LF alone doesn't own, in case someone who doesn't know the score is reading this... it is the combo of LF with 100% piercing (or nearly so) that does the trick. Unlike v1.09 Guided Arrow, however, Blizz intended LF to so benefit.

[Caaroid]

Charged strike owns :)
AND that you cant use it with Lycander's bow :P

[whyBish]

Even if that is the case, which I doubt strongly, getting to that clvl (90..96) is rather difficult killing only bovines

Well, I was doing very nicely in non-bovine areas with only 1pt in pierce. The trick with CS/LF is to use LF as a softener, as a way to avoid having to *move* to archers, or to finish of a dispersed pack of archers. CS still beats the LF dmg by far, but in HC is more dangerous to use... so a decent tactic is to LF until the monsters are attacking the valk/decoy and then move up to use CS.

(also note that this build doesn't gain much from an enchantress at all, unless you keep a kuko on switch for such times ;) )

P.S. the comment I quoted, I don't understand. Why would an LF zon bother killing bovines anymore?

[Crystalion]

P.S. the comment I quoted, I don't understand.&nbsp; Why would an LF zon bother killing bovines anymore?

The comment is in reference to the supposition (that I was responding to, attempting to deny) that ladder zons are all unbalanced LF zons that can't handle hell but instead just farm xp.

With 100% pierce the cows still offer an ideal environment to "safely" farm xp (e.g. my clvl 44 zon's valk can not be scratched by mlvl 61 nm cows, for example--i.e., cows are stupid, and stupid monsters = player safety).

However, if you don't have a high level of piercing, then the math in favor of LF/cowpacks isn't compelling.

Still, since you can do this cookie cutter build, I needed to deny the plausibility that all 200 of the hc ladder zons are using it.

Bear in mind that I'm countering varoius objections to zon abilities (which I don't believe hold up). I myself am not advocating any particular build for zons. Merely asserting that I don't believe zons are hopeless in hell in v1.10.

I probably should have just shut up, and posted points to AB zon guides for v1.10, eh? :D