Tankyre ?

[WarlockCC]

Anybody ever try a max valk with max decoy ? And some dodge/avoid/evade on top of that ?

Mana cost: 44
Cast Delay: 6 Seconds
Attack Rating: +1200%
Resist lightning/cold/fire: 80%
Strenght: 500
Dexterity: 240
Defense: +190%
Dodge: 6
Avoid: 7
Evade: 6
Critical Strike: 8
Hit Points: +780%
Item lvl: 82
[Synergy] Decoy: +40% All Resistances (2% / Lvl)
[Synergy] Decoy: +400% Hit Points (20% / Lvl)
[Synergy] Penetrate: +400% Attack Rating (40% / Lvl)
[Synergy] Dodge: +6 Dodge (1 / Lvl)
[Synergy] Avoid: +7 Avoid (1 / Lvl)
[Synergy] Evade: +6 Evade (1 / Lvl)
[Synergy] Critical Strike: +8 Critical Strike (1 / Lvl)

From the synergies I think you can see what skillpoints I put in the calc.
+780% hitpoints... +780% of the caster's hitpoints ?

Could you boost your valk all the way and have her do all the killing, putting on pure MF gear ?

The above Valk would cost 79 skillpoints, many of which offcourse also benifit you. So, this 'build' could be finished at level 67(+2 amy time).
Naturally you could also take a attack skill for yourself, like GA, but that would finish the build later.

The decoy would have these stats :
Mana cost: 4.7
Resist lightning/cold/fire: 80%
Base hit points from caster: 50%
Hit Points: +200%
Duration: 105 Seconds

As allways, I am not interested that it won't kill faster then a powerbuild hammerdin. I play for fun. Just think out of the box for a bit here.
I just wonder how much punishment such a valk could take and what, bessides the obvious pvp(I think any char would be able to mash up the valk in pvp), would beat the living snot out of her ? Council would probably do a good job at smacking her around. Styggies might be less effective on her due to the high amount of life. I guess she could be compared a bit to a high life Clay Golem(Clay Golems can go up to 10500 life without BO), except that she can do damage. In the past, when mh was running rampant I have been told that my level 20 valk spawned with some pretty nice gear. If only there was a way to actually see her gear for myself.

I have a zon with level 20 valk, I'll do some testing with her in Hell and then I'll imagine her with 5 times her life and 40% more resistances. Perhaps I'll invest the 8 points she still has waiting into decoy to see what it does.

Now, supposing we go for max +skills. tarn, silks, +2 amy, 2 SoJs, +2 zon weapon(or sig shield and culwins point).
The valk's stats would be like this :
Mana cost: 52
Cast Delay: 6 Seconds
Attack Rating: +1520%
Resist lightning/cold/fire: 85%
Strenght: 700
Dexterity: 336
Defense: +270%
Dodge: 6
Avoid: 7
Evade: 6
Critical Strike: 8
Hit Points: +940%
Item lvl: 106
[Synergy] Decoy: +40% All Resistances (2% / Lvl)
[Synergy] Decoy: +400% Hit Points (20% / Lvl)
[Synergy] Penetrate: +400% Attack Rating (40% / Lvl)
[Synergy] Dodge: +6 Dodge (1 / Lvl)
[Synergy] Avoid: +7 Avoid (1 / Lvl)
[Synergy] Evade: +6 Evade (1 / Lvl)
[Synergy] Critical Strike: +8 Critical Strike (1 / Lvl)

Yet another build brough to you by the 'Why not' department of 'obscure builds inc'.

[Stash]

+ Maybe Ice arrow..

Or perhaps Multi shot with Iceblink :O
Or Multishot with knockback

It might work :D in duels if u harass someone with knockback the valky could come and poke him to death.. with her 200% lance

Or when the opponent is stunned by KB you can cast valkyrie next to him

D: thats worth trying!

Sometimes Valkyries may have Immunities on higher difficulty. You may wish to recast Valkyrie until you get one.
:P

[WarlockCC]

That is good to know about a valk. Guess I'll just buy a few mana potions to keep casting her until she has an immunity.
I think she will have those immunities a lot faster when she has that 40%(technically only 38% cause 1 decoy is prereq) extra res she gets from decoy.

Does multi require AR to hit ?
Does strafe require AR to hit ?

I couldn't find anything concerning on the arreat.

[purplelocust]

Now, supposing we go for max +skills. tarn, silks, +2 amy, 2 SoJs, +2 zon weapon(or sig shield and culwins point).
An all-passive Zon is an interesting idea, and I think feasible with patience. I've never made the max decoy version, but it sounds promising. I did have a high-level Valk who showed her prowess for me once by wandering off and killing the cow king, oops. (I'm pretty sure she was enchanted at the time.) One thing that is worth considering is to seek out a skill shrine before casting the Valk- this Valk will be very long lasting and so it may be worth the trouble (and of course a battle command/bo/shout is a big plus in party play.)

For prebuffable skills and summons, in general I am a big fan of finding skill shrines. Same effect as 2 SoJ's and much much cheaper...

[Noite Escura]

I think fredsta tried to make a valkazon for the "Immortality giveaway contest", but lost patience with the build. I read in some place it takes forever for her to kill bosses, so boosting GA(or Strafe) might be a must. Multi can be used at base level with some + skills.
Also, keep in mind she will be a Tankazon until level 30.

[SirDooFuss]

You might want to check out SuperDave's progress with this Hardcore Single Player Passives-Only zon (LOD though, sorry!). Quite inspiring, really.

His rules:

playing single player...players 8
she will be naked or use cracked/damaged/low quality items only.
all passive build.
full clears.
no atma.

At this point he's knocking on Nightmare Baal's door.

[WarlockCC]

I am considering a tankyre in addition to my baliasta strafezon, but I am wondering if anybody has any experience with such a boosted zon in Classic.
Also, if strafe is bugged like fend, where you miss the rest of your volley in a attack after doing a dodge/evede/avoid, I can't even take those three damage reducing skills.

[WarlockCC]

Any thoughts about this build :
Level 1 Magic Arrow [1],
Level 1 Fire Arrow [1],
Level 20 Cold Arrow [6],
Level 1 Multiple Shot [6],
Level 20 Exploding Arrow [12],
Level 1 Ice Arrow [18],
Level 0 Guided Arrow [18],
Level 20 Immolation Arrow [24],
Level 0 Strafe [24],
Level 20 Freezing Arrow [30]
Level 1 Critical Strike [1],
Level 1 Penetrate [18],
Level 5 Pierce [30]

'finished' at level 80, points in pierce from there. Or dodge/evade/avoid.

Chance missiles pass through target: 55%

Immolation Arrow :
Mana cost: 15.5
Cast Delay: 1 Seconds
Attack Rating: +201%
Fire damage: 1080 - 1110 (ø1095)
Fire duration: 3 Seconds
Fire damage per second: 107 - 109(ø 108)
Fire radius: 2 Yards
[Synergy] Exploding Arrow: +200% Fire damage (10% / Lvl)
[Synergy] Fire Arrow: +5% Fire damage per second (5% / Lvl)

Freezing Arrow :
Mana cost: 18.5
Cold Duration: 2.1 Seconds
Attack Rating: +211%
Cold Damage: 1054 - 1088 (ø1071)
Cold Radius: 3.3 Yards
[Synergy] Cold Arrow: +240% Cold Damage (12% / Lvl)
[Synergy] Ice Arrow: +5% Lenght (5% / Lvl)

No need for critital strike, since your arrows physical damage will be virtually nill, there is little reason to try and double that.
Ice Arrow only increases the cold duration and doesn't add to the damage.
Fire arrow increases the the fire damage of the fire after the arrow explodes, few monsters will stand still to enjoy it.

Using Wizendraw, Twitch, Deaths Gloves and Belt, Angelic Ring(s)+Amu, Goblins.
Helm is open.
Howl mebbe ? It's heavy though. (63 str req) It has knockback, monster flee and 35 dtm (Angelics has 20dtm already though, so if you get hit, you'll be full anyway)
Face has 10 res all and monster flee... let's not.
Dusk has 15 res all and 8 max damage... moving on.
Coif features Hit Blinds Target, might be nice. Anybody know if that works well on a zon ?
Tarn +1 skill, MF and GF. dunno. Fire damage does up by about 100 and cold goes up by 50 or so.
Of the uniques I guess Howl is the best option. You could also just go for some rare, so you at least have some resists. Cause this build is very low on resists, 15 all and 50 poison res from Deaths and 26 cold res from wiz. Hey, at least your poison res is above zero.

The following would be bad helm choices :
Bonnet is pointless, no phys damage, so nothing to enhance. Either of the ll helms is futile aswell for the same reason, especially since you don't really need poison res due to wearing deaths.

You could do with 1 Angelic ring or just take off Angelics enterly to replace them with rares/uniques. Manaleech... I doubt you do enough physical damage to see a difference. You're going to hit the bottle, so you better learn to like it. On the up side, with rare rings you might actually get some res.

You'd make the 70 ias breakpoint getting you 11 frames per attack.
If you drop the twitch you make the 48 ias bp and get 12 fpa.
Next higher bp is at 105, so don't bother trying in classic.

Stats ? Think up your own. You could go almost entirely vit I guess. Be creative. Don't take dex, as you have almost no physical damage to enhance.
Mebbe nrg isn't a bad idea, since you will be using pots, might aswell fill up a bigger mana pool to enjoy your pots longer(max 8 pots in your belt). Then again, pots are cheap and easily restocked.

Weee, kinda miniguide. Now I'll go check how many people wrote this one before me, as this puzzle all fell together rather neatly, there are bound to have been others that walked the same path.
---===---
Well now, couldn't find any other fire/ice zon guides in the brief seconds I looked.
Does this mean I get my first entry into the 'Classic Build Guides and Other Useful Information' thread ? :)
Guess I should name such a zon then. 'Flaming Frostmaiden' ? Best I could do on such short notice, live with it.

[norvi11erogers]

Sorry to disappoint, but here is a thread I wrote about a week ago:
http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=483620
and here is a followup:
http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=487375

EDIT: I wrote a long post here, but instead of hijacking your thread, I will put it in my own thread, the first link up there. Might be helpful. Freya's guide in the zon forums might also be good:
http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=129705

EDIT2: Now the post in my thread doesn't make much sense. I'm adding a link to yours, but I'm too lazy to fix all the "your suggestions" etc to things that function within my own thread. Slash i'm at work. Bah.

I'm happy so far with the damage from FA. I'm moving through act 2 hell and pretty much doing most all the damage for my party against non-cold immunes. The viper lair will be frustrating without a good party though. The build is safe, and I mostly only die when I do something retarded.

Here's a note for you though Warlock. There is another version of the bulid which requires high damage+leech instead of a big mana bulb. I think it's called a vamp. You will want penetrate, because you're going to actually need to hit some things to leech.

To me, this seems like a pretty good use of your ballista. Strafe+FA might work well. Don't you sort of need similar equipment for both? The points in penetrate and strafe will probably not be nearly as numerous as those in the fire tree, which would mean you'd have some skills for passives, and honestly, you can do without maxing cold arrow. 15 is probably fine.

Ok, i require you to try this.

[WarlockCC]

My above suggestion is not a Freezing arrow zon though, she has equal skillpoints invested in Flaming and Freezing and hardly any passives because of that. No Valk for instance, Guess she is more of a group player.
The idea came from a Zon TDL was playing a while back, which also combined Fire and Cold on a zon equally. Like your post, Freya's guide also seems focussed on Freezing arrow. I have seen many Frost Maiden guides, just no Freezing/Immolation arrow guides for classic zons.

But, indeed it's good that Freya wrote you don't actually need AR to hit with the cold damage part of your freezing arrow. I think the same holds true for the Fire-arrows, so no need for Angelics then. Freedom to choose your own rezzy rings I guess.

ATM my balista is in use on my leve 71 strafezon, which works rather well.
My balista, which doesn't have any ias, is too slow for anything other then strafe I think.
I do have a pair of 135-ish goths lying around, which I can dedicate to this purpose. Though I first want to have some more fun with my balista strafezon. :)

[norvi11erogers]

While my post and Freya's guide are labeled as Freezing Arrow zons, one of her variants (the typical LoD mageazon) as well as my original skill plan outline a pretty much equal split between fire and cold. I happened to put more into FA and its synergy earlier, but that doesn't mean the fire tree will remain empty. The reason I put more into it more quickly is because of the crowd control and because the cold's spamable skill does essentially double the damage of the fire. I noted your original bow idea was wizendraw, a bow with no useful mods for the fire arrows, and so I thought you were leaning towards cold and thus it would be appropriate to show you these builds. And yes, AR is useless for the area of effect, though it still makes a difference for the actual arrow and hence leech in that type of build.

If you're really going to do a halfway split between cold and fire, I really think you should consider doomslinger -- it's like giving yourself free skill points in pierce, which is probably the most important skill for either build. Later, when I'm home, I'll send a comparison between the two bows.

It seems to me that the passives are the primary difference between a zon and any other character. Without them, as far as I can tell, a zon would simply be a glacial spike/fireball sorc with no block and teleport, as well as poorer resists and damage, at least when it comes to fire. After using even a lowish level valk and decoy, I have to say that they increase the survivability greatly. They are also party friendly, at the very least, by taking damage away from others.

[WarlockCC]

According to the calc, both skills seem to do about 1k, which is something I don't think you can easily achieve with a sorc. It's to be able to kill those cold immunes in CS aswell. Since I have often seen cold zons in CS combined with blizz sorcs and orb sorcs. Those Oblivions really bug me, hence the specific part of this build to pump fire with 40 skillpoints aswell.

The Doomslinger gets 11fpa at 35 ias. It has 30 ias of itself, so only 5 more is needed(asside from the Blood Cresent, classic only has increments of 10).
And a minor glitch in my Wizdraw calculation, at 35 you also get 11fpa and at 56 you get 10fpa. Next one is at 89 ias, so you can't make that one in classic. Wiz has 20 ias of itself, which leaves you to get an additional 36 (40)
Best would be to probably still stick with deaths, since you do not want to get cold slowed. But another option, without cbf would be Iratha's with twtich. odd combi, but it gets you the ias you desire, 65 res all, 20frw on top of what your boots give, 10 to max res, perhaps with the right rings you might fill that. Well, with just Iratha's you end up on 15 res all in Hell (Woohoo, not negative). Rings can drop with up to 30 of a specific res (up to 3 res per ring) and with 2 rings, that means you can get another 60 res for for instance fire. Which puts you on 75. Oh well.
Therefore, as you suggested, your Doomslinger might just be the better of the two, even though it doesn't get that 10fpa. If I remember correctly, pierce is not capped at 95%, so you could actually get 100% or more pierce with this bow. Though I vaguely recall reading bow projectiles are limited to about 5 piercings.
Even though a valk is nice to have, they are so very oblivious to anything that might endanger your zon. When the valk is tanking a flayer shaman, you kill the shaman (knock the top flayer off), a normal flayer remains, but the valk thinks "Job well done, time to head home" and she walks right trough you, leaving you the blunt of the flayer's anger. With my build you still have some points for passives though. like the 5 in pierce. you could distribute those differently and stick them in valk. But I do think this sets our builds apart, this zon is more for the damage and may indeed be more like a glacial spike/fireball sorc, cept with higher damage then you can achieve on a sorc with 40 points in each of those skills. Not to mention my build will have pierce, 55 at level 80 with a wiz or 90 with a doomslinger at that same level.

[norvi11erogers]

According to the calc, both skills seem to do about 1k, which is something I don't think you can easily achieve with a sorc. It's to be able to kill those cold immunes in CS aswell. Since I have often seen cold zons in CS combined with blizz sorcs and orb sorcs. Those Oblivions really bug me, hence the specific part of this build to pump fire with 40 skillpoints aswell.

The Doomslinger gets 11fpa at 35 ias. It has 30 ias of itself, so only 5 more is needed(asside from the Blood Cresent, classic only has increments of 10).
And a minor glitch in my Wizdraw calculation, at 35 you also get 11fpa and at 56 you get 10fpa. Next one is at 89 ias, so you can't make that one in classic. Wiz has 20 ias of itself, which leaves you to get an additional 36 (40)
Best would be to probably still stick with deaths, since you do not want to get cold slowed. But another option, without cbf would be Iratha's with twtich. odd combi, but it gets you the ias you desire, 65 res all, 20frw on top of what your boots give, 10 to max res, perhaps with the right rings you might fill that. Well, with just Iratha's you end up on 15 res all in Hell (Woohoo, not negative). Rings can drop with up to 30 of a specific res (up to 3 res per ring) and with 2 rings, that means you can get another 60 res for for instance fire. Which puts you on 75. Oh well.
Therefore, as you suggested, your Doomslinger might just be the better of the two, even though it doesn't get that 10fpa. If I remember correctly, pierce is not capped at 95%, so you could actually get 100% or more pierce with this bow. Though I vaguely recall reading bow projectiles are limited to about 5 piercings.
Even though a valk is nice to have, they are so very oblivious to anything that might endanger your zon. When the valk is tanking a flayer shaman, you kill the shaman (knock the top flayer off), a normal flayer remains, but the valk thinks "Job well done, time to head home" and she walks right trough you, leaving you the blunt of the flayer's anger. With my build you still have some points for passives though. like the 5 in pierce. you could distribute those differently and stick them in valk. But I do think this sets our builds apart, this zon is more for the damage and may indeed be more like a glacial spike/fireball sorc, cept with higher damage then you can achieve on a sorc with 40 points in each of those skills. Not to mention my build will have pierce, 55 at level 80 with a wiz or 90 with a doomslinger at that same level.

I've considered irathras, but the lack of cold damage is problematic. Eye is pretty much required in LoD, and with fewer cold duration items in classic, it seems like eye would be pretty much mandatory.

Also, some bad news: I was just reading at the amazon basin (and I guess there's also a reply post in freya's guide on like the 3rd page) that pierce requires an actual hit which requires ar. Even worse news - sometimes when you see a successful pierce, it is just graphical. It makes me really reconsider my current build -- I might be adding a lot of dex, which means a higher damage bow and thus leech would be possible, which means my points in energy would be wasted and also that a few points in strafe/penatrate would be useful. Maybe I'll add sig's helm+boots or something and see how that works....

[WarlockCC]

Indeed the sig is prolly the best option, if you have the str for it already.
Hsarus prolly isn't a good idea, since you might be wearing deaths sash.
I guess you wouldn't want Angelics because you would be missing your eye.
Though you should just compare the awesome ar the angelics will get you. Or perhaps wear Angelic armor and rings. Missing out on the ias of twitch though, but you could go for the 11fpa breakpoint. You will need 15 ias on top of the wizz's 20ias to get that breakpoint.
If you wear twitch and intend to go for the 35ias breakpoint (twitch already gets you there) you could consider wearing cleglaws gloves for the knockback and slow. This might get you the extra time to compensate for the 'loss' of your eye of the etlich.

[norvi11erogers]

Not sure kb works when frozen. Even if it did, I think it might only work on the actual arrow bit. I may end up adding into penetrate - would help the valk anways, and then pump passives.

Also, true, valks are idiots, but you can always recast. I rarely find the timer on Valk to be a problem. And standing in place is what decoys are for.

[WarlockCC]

Ah, yes, good point, you might actually knock them out of being frozen.
Indeed you are right, I should just use my decoy more, usually I just forget about the decoy even though I have it under a hotkey. Mind you I haven't played pvm zon's since very early 1.09 and that one was a unplanned, what does this skill do, my-first-amazon kinda zon. :)

Sometimes the valk's walking speed gets really annoying aswell, or when she just walks back and forth behind you in stead of walking that little bit forward to draw fire her way. Sigh.
Oh well, my valk is nearly indestructable and she kills things aswell. She does on occasion kill herself with IM, but oh well. Like you say, a recast is easily done.

[norvi11erogers]

Ah, yes, good point, you might actually knock them out of being frozen.
Indeed you are right, I should just use my decoy more, usually I just forget about the decoy even though I have it under a hotkey. Mind you I haven't played pvm zon's since very early 1.09 and that one was a unplanned, what does this skill do, my-first-amazon kinda zon. :)

Sometimes the valk's walking speed gets really annoying aswell, or when she just walks back and forth behind you in stead of walking that little bit forward to draw fire her way. Sigh.
Oh well, my valk is nearly indestructable and she kills things aswell. She does on occasion kill herself with IM, but oh well. Like you say, a recast is easily done.

This is your tankyre? Killing stuff even? If I have limited points - I estimate probably around 20 total before this zon is done - with 7 already in valk, do you have any recommendations for the most important places to put the skill points to get an effective tank/killer? I believe I read that as the valk level increases, the alvl of her lance's mods get better.

[WarlockCC]

Well, she does hit things, yes. I do have 5 or so points in penetrade, so I guess that helps her hit. And the 500 Str she has helps her do damage. Takes her about 5 or 6 hits to kill a Doom knight, so don't count on her to do the bulk of the killing. But she will happely stand in a groupd of enemies without so much as a scratch on her. Sometimes the infector's group does do a bit of damage to her depending on their mods.
My valk is level 20 with level 20 decoy though. I just went for max. I had the points, why not ? :)
I also did some strafing with a high damage 20ias goth. That is quite amusing aswell and notably faster.

[Dacar92]

Here is some Valk info from LOD. Someone else will have to tell you what is good info for Classic, if any at all.

lvl 1 rare full plate mail and spear
lvl 2 adds magic heavy gloves
lvl 4 adds magic heavy boots
lvl 5 adds magic heavy belt
lvl 7 upgrades full plate mail to rare chaos armor
lvl 8 upgrades spear to rare lance
lvl 10 upgrades heavy gloves to magic war gauntlets
lvl 11 upgrades heavy boots to magic war boots
lvl 12 upgrades heavy belt to magic war belt
lvl 13 adds magic amulet
lvl 14 adds magic circlet
lvl 16 replaces chaos armor with rare sacred armor
lvl 17 replaces lance with rare war pike
lvl 19 upgrades war gauntlets to rare crusader gauntlets
lvl 21 upgrades war boots to rare mirrored boots
lvl 23 upgrades war belt to rare colussus girdle
lvl 25 upgrades magic amulet to rare amulet
lvl 27 upgrades circlet to rare tiara


Armor
Prefixes
Blue: Dragon's (+mana, useless on a Valk)
Dark Gold: Saintly, Holy, Godly
Light Yellow: Glowing
White: Faithful
Suffixes
Blue: of Nova
Red: of the Mammoth, of the Colussus
Dark Red: of Defiance
Dark Yellow: of Stability
Orange: of Spikes, of Razors

Weapons (or spears)
Prefixes
Black: Ferocious, Cruel
Dark Gold: Massive, Savage, Merciless, Knight's, Lord's, King's, Master's, Elysian
Dark Green: Septic, Envemoned, Corrosive, Toxic
Dark Red: Ember, Smoldering, Smoking, Flaming, Condensing
Green: Valkyrie's, Berserker's
Light Blue: Snowy, Shivering, Boreal, Hibernal
Light Gold: Gold, Platinum, Meteoric, Strange, Veteran's, Raging, Resonant, Pure, Sacred, Hallowed, Spearmaiden's
Light Yellow: Static, Glowing, Buzzing, Arcing, Shocking
White: Fool's, Grinding, Hawkeye
Suffixes
Black: of Carnage, of Slaughter, of Performance, of Transcendence
Blue: of Nova, of Lightning, of the Glacier, of Winter
Red: of the Locust, of the Lamprey, of the Wraith, of the Vampire,
Dark Green: of Pestilence, of Anthrax
Dark Red: of Burning, of Incineration
Dark Yellow: of Thunder, of Storms, of Quickness
Dark Gold: of the Giant
Light Blue: of Icebolt

Orange-damage returned
silver-def based on char lv
gold-enhanced def
black weapon cruel
red weapon-life leech.
Blue Frost Nova

[WarlockCC]

Well, I used my decoy more and it works rather well. Especially since my decoy can take quite a bit of punishment before leaving the scene.
As long as the Valk has a monster to poke, she survives, but when she is getting pummeled from a distance by Oblivion Knights ranged attacks, or their little brethren in the river, she actually loses life quite fast. So use your decoy to draw this kind of elemental ranged attack away from your valk and she should be fine as long as she has an enemy to leech. I think my valk has 4k life atm at level 22 with 20 solid points in decoy.
I found out the above when I went to do the forge. At some point I just really have enough of cain telling me I need to destroy mephisto's stink stone.
Group of Urdars, no problem, no damage. Some Stygian dogs while getting hit by ranged elemental attacks, she took damage, all the way down to half of her life. Which she quickly regained when she started poking something solid again.