Any Low Budget Builds?

[Slipknirvana]

Amazons have always interested me, but never really had the motivation I guess. Now starting over and looking at the guides I didn't see any builds that you could play untwinked. Figured I see if anyone knew any.

[crawlingdeadman]

somewhere i've read an untwinked javazon guide that said it could do hell with cracked javelins. i'll look for it when i get a chance.

[CaptnSparrow]

somewhere i've read an untwinked javazon guide that said it could do hell with cracked javelins. i'll look for it when i get a chance.


Probably just a standard Lightning amazon. Lightning damage is mostly independent from javelin damage.

[basictrainer]

pure passives amazon

http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=480035

[HeroXVII]

Naked passivezon with cracked class gear can get through hell.

[maiku]

On the last ladder, I ran a pure lightning javazon. It was a lot of fun, but the regularity of running into lightning immunes in hell difficulty really puts a cramp on fast killing and can sometimes get you killed if you're swarmed by a lot of lightning immunes. You have to hope that you can kill them with your mercenary and valkyrie or switch weapons. Ok, I have to make this post pretty quick, because I'm having computer problems, so I don't know when it'll go out. I was going to reply to this an hour ago, but my computer shut down and rebooted randomly and it may be on its last legs.

I'll group my suggestions by main types: bowazons, javazons, and spearazons/tankazons.

Bowazons

Burizazon. You could make an Amazon who uses Strafe or Multishot with a Buriza Do-Kyanon crossbow. This is a hard-hitting crossbow that can be found or had for fairly cheap. It goes for 5-6 perfect gems on USWest trading. Str requirement is a bit higher than many elite bows, but it can go up to 400ish max damage, IIRC, when you hit high levels. I am running a Mageazon with this right now and she kills everything with Frozen Arrow and physical damage in nightmare. I hope she does well in hell difficulty. Don't add to pierce or more than 1 point to pierce if you intend to stay with Buriza. Buriza gives you an automatic 100% pierce.

Harmony bowazon. Like a regular Strafer or Multishot zon, except that you build a Harmony into a bow like a Blade, Ward, or +1 or +2 Matriarchal. I would recommend these bows for speed and low strength requirements, which allows you to pump dexterity higher. "Harmony" is Tir Ith Sol Ko, all easily findable or obtainable runes through trade. I made mine with my own self-found runes and a Blade I found in hell act 1. Harmony offers a lot of elemental damage (1-150 each of fire, lightning, and cold) so is useful for taking out physical immunes in hell difficulty. It also offers solid enhanced damage, 200-260%, IIRC. If using Harmony as primary bow, pump dexterity higher and keep strength low, and get Critical Strike to 10-15 and pierce around 10 or more, so you can have 70-80% piercing. This'll be standard for any bowazon who isn't using a special bow or crossbow that grants Deadly Strike or automatic pierce. Try to get an amulet that grants Deadly Strike and IAS or Amp damage like Highlord's or Atma's eventually, so you can make your damage skyrocket.

Witchyzon. Check for the guide on the forum. It may be a page or two back. My level 80 bowazon is a Witchyzon, built according to the guide. I do a lot of hell runs and leveling with her, and she's a lot of fun. Witchwild String has decent damage and speed, +40 to all resists, 2 sockets (!), Deadly Strike, and 2% to cast amp damage on striking. When combined with fast Strafe, you trigger Deadly Strike and Amp regularly on most packs, cutting through them with ease in hell difficulty. My Witchyzon has low base strength and very high dexterity (420 base), making her do about 4.4K damage when Deadly Strike, Amp, and merc's Might aura are going. If making a Witchyzon, do not invest more than one point into Critical Strike, as more will be a waste. Deadly Strike will do the double damage for you more regularly. WWS can be had for low runes, perfect gems, or a few low-level uniques if you wish to trade for it on the forums. It is in some demand here, but in no demand on Bnet. Most people on Bnet throw it away as junk or a curiosity and have no idea about a Witchyzon build, so I wouldn't recommend trying to trade for it there.

Mageazon. All you need is some bow or crossbow with piercing, like a Doomslinger (1 pgem or for free, easy to find), Kuko Shakaku (1-3 perfect gems on trade forums), or Buriza (5-6 pgems). A Mageazon is played a bit like a sorceress, except your arrows or bolts will carry piercing elemental arrows. A variant of this is a dedicated Mavina Set Frostmaiden, who uses Cold Arrows and Frozen Arrows and the Mav set, which can be put together for relatively cheap through trading or hell runs in like the Pit or Tower. The most expensive part of the Mav set is the bow, which is a mediocre bow (I've seen it recently sold for a lem or 10-15 perfect gems), but since a Mageazon derives a large part of her damage from her synergies in Frozen Arrow and Immolation/Exploding Arrow, bow damage may not matter so much. Extra physical damage on top of your beefy elemental damage is just icing. For stats, pump dex and you may go a bit higher with your strength than you would for a normal Strafer or Multishot zon, so you can use a Mav bow or Buriza or even a Hellrack for bigger elemental damage (socket with hel or -15% jewels to lower its insane strength requirement). I just want to say that on my last Mageazon I tried maxing Immolation Arrow and I found it to be useless in hell difficulty because of the timer. When you can't fire fast enough to catch and roast enemies in the mini-firewall, you can't kill them before they overrun your punching bags (Valk, mercenary, decoy) and kill you. Immolation is terrible. Stay away from it. Cold Arrow and Frozen Arrow are much better and you'll be exploding packs for thousands of cold damage through normal and nightmare in one or two shots. Use either +80-100 mana rings, mana leech rings, or an Insight polearm on your mercenary to keep the mana flowing and your elemental arrows shooting. Stack a lot of +skills items, because they make your elemental skills do a lot more damage. You can probably reach 1.5-2K+ damage with Frozen Arrow's cold damage alone. I would also get Critical Strike up to 10-15 to double damage on the physical arrow itself while its piercing packs. Strong Valk is also needed for hell difficulty, unless you can make your mercenary quite powerful. Insight highly recommended and easy to make with self-found runes. Make one for early difficulties, then one for hell difficulty later in an exceptional or elite polearm with 4 sockets. One of the big draws of the Frostmaiden mageazon is that she keeps enemies frozen for several seconds at a time, reducing deaths and risk to other party members. Beware that necros will hate you for shattering enemies and leaving no corpses.

Hellrack Colossus Crossbow zon. I've never met one, but I'd like to try to make one in the future. This unique crossbow offers nearly 1K damage through elemental damage alone and has 300ish max damage, so it hits *very* hard. Its two problems are the very slow attack speed and very high strength requirements. I would suggest sticking two hel runes to reduce requirements or one and a shael in it to speed it up. Then stack a lot of IAS on your zon so you can hit the fastest Strafe or Multishot possible. You won't hit fast, but when you hit, everything should die horribly. Can be found or had for 5-10 perfect gems on the trading forums. This is not in demand, and don't let anyone scam you of paying more than perfect gems for it.

Regular Strafer/Multizon who uses something like Riphook, Lycander's Aim, Magewrath, Goldstrike Arch, etc. These bows are easily had for a few perfect gems or can be found. Find one of these good exceptional bows and use it, then when you get a Pul rune upgrade it and you will have a hell-viable weapon right there. Make according to regular Strafer/Multizon builds, like 10-15 in Crit Strike, Penetrate, Piercing, max Valkyrie, etc. Try to obtain a Cat's Eye Amulet or Atma's Scarab; this latter one is probably the optimal amulet to make the most of your physical damage.

Hybrid: You pick something like Cold Arrow and Frozen Arrow for your main bow skills and then Lightning Fury and Charged Strike for javelin skills, making yourself a bowazon/javazon as the situation calls for and using a dual attack. Another is Strafer + Cold Arrow + Frozen Arrow or Strafer + Lightning Fury, etc. You will be very versatile and need to plan your skills and stats accordingly.

Javazons

Pure lightning javazon. Max most of the synergies for Charged Strike and Lightning Fury and get your pierce to 10 or max it. Charged Strike for primary melee attack and Lightning Fury for ranged attack. Very powerful. You can crisp everything with crap equipment and crap javelins all the way through normal and nightmare. Baal runs are easy and laughable. It's when you get to hell difficulty that it becomes tougher, as you can run into lightning immunes in many places, which makes killing slow and your reliance on one elemental form of damage makes you vulnerable. I made one on last ladder, and though I enjoyed her a lot, I found it to be a major pain in the butt when I ran into lightning immunes. Now, I favor hybrids or builds with more versatile attacks. You will be very powerful, though, and perhaps one of the best boss-killer builds available. Charged Strike can fry a boss with all the charged bolts for many thousands of damage per strike. Imagine if you had an Infinity polearm on a mercenary. Unfortunately, you need to high runes to make an Infinity, and considering I didn't have the means for that, my javazon suffered. I highly suggest getting Thunderstroke, Titan's Fury, or a nice rare matriarchal javelin with big stacks and replenishing quantity. These are all cheap, going for perfect gems or a lem at the most. You may also want to consider getting Thundergod's Vigor for the +3 to Lightning Fury.

Poison javazon. Get your poison jav skills maxed and synergized. If possible, get Trang-Oul's gloves and make a Bramble rune word armor. I haven't tried a pure poison javazon in a long time, so I don't know how well they play in nightmare or hell difficulties. I hear some people do play and like them.

Charged Striker. Max out the synergies for Charged Strike, but also focus heavily on Dodge and Evade skills, so you can avoid most of the punishing attacks of hell difficulty enemies and try to maintain max block. Get good resists. Suffers from some of the same problems as pure lightning javazon, although bosses will cry when you're close by.

Spearazon/Tankazon builds

I'm also a fan of various spearazon builds, and now that I have a better grasp of rune words, including cheap but good ones, I think I can make some suggestions.

Fendazon. Fend is a powerful skill, much like the Amazon's version of Zeal for spears or javelins. It offers a hefty damage and AR boost. But you need to be aware of the Fend "bug," where if you are hit during a Fend cycle and have Dodge/Avoid/Evade, you will do the animation and miss all subsequent attacks in the cycle. This is "whiffing" when you seem to be hitting but actually are missing. I experienced it on my first Fendazon in a long time last ladder. Now, if I was to make a Fendazon, I would keep D/A/E at 1 point and shield myself more with Valkyrie, Decoy, and Mercenary and attack from behind the wall. Fend kills things easily and you will do a lot of damage with Critical Strike. If you want to not get Dodge/Avoid/Evade and Valkyrie (D/A/E are all pre-reqs for Valk), use a Decoy as a Valk substitute. So max Decoy and build up your mercenary's equipment, so they both can take a pounding and you can wade into the fight yourself. You will avoid the Fend bug this way. But you need ways of avoiding or reducing damage, so look to high vitality (200-250+), high defense armor, lots of IAS so you can poke guys faster, and damage reduction equipment like String of Ears, Shaftstop, etc. Also, get a lot of faster hit recovery items if you want to take a pounding and pound them back. Good spears include Lycander's Flank and Hone Sundan Yari or Kelpie Snare (for 75% slow). Try to load a lot of Crushing Blow, so you can take down packs and bosses much faster. Deadly Strike items are not required as much, since you have Critical Strike. Good rune words for a spearazon, IMO, would be Insight (good damage, very nice stats, magic find, cheap), Crescent Moon (static, chain lightning, good damage, ignore target defense!), Passion (Zeal and Berserk, decent damage, cheap), and Obedience which offers incredible damage (+370% ED) and stats for such common runes (Hel + Ko + Thul + Eth + Fal).

Jabazon. As the name suggests, this spearazon uses Jab as her primary skill, either with 1 point or 20. Its disadvantage is that while a fast killer versus single targets, against multiple targets or large packs, she can become bogged down and killed. This is why I prefer a Fendazon. My Jabazons never seem to get far before I get frustrated with them. Would be good against bosses, though, because you could focus on them. Load crushing blow and a very powerful spear.

Impaleazon. Never tried one, but Impale offers incredible damage at a very slow attack speed. I've read that this can be made much better by stacking a lot of IAS items. Decreased durability is not really an issue, because Zealots and Fendazons face the same problems with their weapons breaking often from fast attacks. Also would suffer some of the same problems, I imagine, as a Jabazon would with crowd control. I would try to get Amp damage somehow to really take advantage of the incredible damage.

Lightning Spearazon. Find a fast-hitting spear and fry packs with one of the lightning jav/spear skills. I read a guide once by SSoG who made a strange spearazon, I think he called it a Fuglyzon or something like that, which used Blackhorn's Face or Face of Horror, a fast spear, and some other items to get the most out of the lightning jav skill that shoots chain lightning. By having a slower attack and monster flee and knockback, he was able to allow chain lightning to work on the packs of monsters as they broke up and dispersed from the flee and knockback mods. While they fled, they took many thousands of lightning damage and his zon was very safe. A very interesting, cheap, and viable build. All the items for that build should be obtainable for free or for a few perfect gems.

Tankazon. Forget traditional amazon builds and build one of the toughest tanks in the game. With Dodge/Avoid/Evade, you can make most attacks, melee, missiles, or magic, miss you! With a shield, you can have max block. Pump passives high, including Penetrate or Inner Sight (one or the other), so you have a way of dealing with high enemy defenses. Max Valkyrie, get a Might mercenary to add to your own damage, and get some kind of hard-hitting weapon and wade into battle like a Paladin or Barbarian would. You can create cheap rune words like Crescent Moon and Passion to help speed up your killing. You could have pretty good damage with 10-15 in Critical Strike...perhaps max it if you are so inclined. Find a lot of hit recovery and IAS items so you can kill faster. I am considering a Tankazon/Lightning zon hybrid in one of my latest threads, because I want something different in the near future.

[crawlingdeadman]

what he said ^^

that's about the single most informative post i've seen in a long time. the only thing i can say about it is that mav bow is insanely easy to find and the helm is in fact the hardest item of the set to find or trade for...other than that great post! :thumbsup:

edit: also check out this thread (http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=495941) for cheap and easy bow runewords such as harmony that was mentioned as well as edge.

[HeroXVII]

Blah blah

Jsut get a windforce.

[AnimeCraze]

Please do not suggest things that are expensive when the person asks for a cheap build. It is not helpful at all.

[crawlingdeadman]

Jsut get a windforce.

you condensing a well written and informative post to "blah blah" is you being a jerk. also if you're going to go on a rant about punctuation and spelling in the community forum maybe you should jsut mak shore to speil corectly, eh?

[Shalam]

Poison javazon. Get your poison jav skills maxed and synergized. If possible, get Trang-Oul's gloves and make a Bramble rune word armor. I haven't tried a pure poison javazon in a long time, so I don't know how well they play in nightmare or hell difficulties. I hear some people do play and like them.

I tried one of these semi untwinked the other day, Normal was fun and stuff died fairly fast. Nightmare was tedious, with ~8+ skills and maxed Plague/Poison Javalin I had around 15K poison damage over 14ish seconds. Ran into far too many monsters with resists and some immunes.

I'v given it up as a bad idea. Can't be bothered attempting hell with so many immunes/high resists.

Maybe as a hybrid it might be reasonable.

[YogiRat]

what he said ^^ Yeah maiku, what's the idea of stealing all our thunder?:badteeth:

Honestly, your post is one of the best I've read here in a long time. Good job!:thumbsup:

[SSoG]

As shocking as it is, Maiku missed a build... and it just so happens to be my favorite untwinked amazon. I suppose we'll have to grade that post a 99.5% instead of a 100%, now. :wink3:

Anyway, my favorite untwinked Amazon build is a big hybrid that mixes Lightning Fury, Plague Javelin, and Freezing Arrow. 20 points in LFury (your primary attack), 20 points in Plague Javelin and Poison Javelin (for a secondary attack to use against LIs), and 5-10 points in Pierce (to make LFury deadly). After that, put one point in Freezing Arrow. On your primary weapon switch, get a cheap +skills javelin (the other mods aren't important, although you'll appreciate Replenish or Increased Stack Size- it's the +skills that are important, though). On your secondary switch, keep a 6os Long Battle Bow stuffed with Perfect Sapphires. If you have trouble finding a 6os Long Battle Bow, take any LBB that you find in mid-nightmare or later and use one of your socket quests on it. A 6-PSaph LBB will add 18 seconds worth of freeze time to your Frozen Arrow, making it positively godly (5 seconds of Freeze even in Hell with no other gear :shocked:). LFury and Plague give you killing skills, Freezing Arrow gives you crowd control. Additional points can either go into Charged Strike for a bosskiller, they can go into Valk/Decoy for better tanking minions, they can go into D/A/E for more security, or they can go to Pierce for more fun with Lightning Fury.

I've beaten Hell with one who wore nothing but white or grey items (with the exception of one Smoke runeword armor and magical/rare jewelry, since there's no such thing as white rings or amulets). She used some white Amazon-specific javelins with +3 Javskills, a 6-PSaph LBB, a 3-PDiamond Large Shield, a +2 Zonskills amulet, a Smoke runeword armor, some rings with resistance on them, and a 3os tiara stuffed with PSapphires to help with my mana issues.

[NASE]

@ maiku: you information about harmony is wrong. Harmony offer 55-160 elemental damage, up to 200-275 %ed and +9 to average damage combine to about 215-290 ed when put in a matriarchal bow. And if you want, you can buy an expensive bow, make harmony and hell it when you ever find the wealth to make faith. This all in the same bow.
Makes you droll doesn't it?

P.S. a daggerzon? They can hit 7 frame per attack, perhaps 6, have decent damage and block rate, be one of the best tanks, and use a type of weapon no-one ever uses, making even high end weapon a lot cheaper then a bow would be. Anyone already tried that?
P.P.S. just remember that some of the build listed here aren't easy to play with. For most of the 'easy' builds, you can find a guide in the sticky.

[WrongdayJ]

I tried a modified version of the dagger-zon- only I used throwing knives and a BUNCH of poison charms. I played her alot like a javazon. . .only I relied on the ranged attack a bit more (as jab with a knife is kinda risky). It worked well. . .although I hit the 'wall' hard in Hell.

I agree with SSoG. The build he recommends has Hell viability and is rather cheap to make- you could do it untwinked easily. (I've done it and the character is a blast to play).

[maiku]

@ maiku: you information about harmony is wrong. Harmony offer 55-160 elemental damage, up to 200-275 %ed and +9 to average damage combine to about 215-290 ed when put in a matriarchal bow. And if you want, you can buy an expensive bow, make harmony and hell it when you ever find the wealth to make faith. This all in the same bow.
Makes you droll doesn't it?

Yes, sorry, I did realize later on that my information about Harmony was off. You are quite correct. Harmony is a very nice bow. Just imagine if it had IAS. Then I think it would definitely give a WindForce a run for its money. I use my Harmony mainly for running through areas fast with its Vigor or disposing of physical immunes. What's interesting, though, is that my WWS on my zon doesn't kill PIs as I thought the Amp would.

P.S. a daggerzon? They can hit 7 frame per attack, perhaps 6, have decent damage and block rate, be one of the best tanks, and use a type of weapon no-one ever uses, making even high end weapon a lot cheaper then a bow would be. Anyone already tried that?
P.P.S. just remember that some of the build listed here aren't easy to play with. For most of the 'easy' builds, you can find a guide in the sticky.

Yeah, I know some aren't easy and require a lot of thought and planning. Sometimes it may take a screw up or two, as I have had in the past with spearazons and mageazons. I was talking last night with a friend who's working on his Mageazon with me, and our builds have gone in totally different directions. He was wondering why he was doing only ~1K damage while my girl was doing about 2.2K, with 1K from Frozen arrow and 1.2K from physical. Difference in how we laid out our stat and skill points. I pumped mostly into dex after I got the strength required to use a Buriza, and he's gone more for survivability, so he's got 150 vitality. I don't really see a need for extra hp on a Mageazon if she's going to keep most guys frozen for a few seconds in hell difficulty.

[maiku]

As shocking as it is, Maiku missed a build... and it just so happens to be my favorite untwinked amazon. I suppose we'll have to grade that post a 99.5% instead of a 100%, now. :wink3:

Anyway, my favorite untwinked Amazon build is a big hybrid that mixes Lightning Fury, Plague Javelin, and Freezing Arrow. 20 points in LFury (your primary attack), 20 points in Plague Javelin and Poison Javelin (for a secondary attack to use against LIs), and 5-10 points in Pierce (to make LFury deadly). After that, put one point in Freezing Arrow. On your primary weapon switch, get a cheap +skills javelin (the other mods aren't important, although you'll appreciate Replenish or Increased Stack Size- it's the +skills that are important, though). On your secondary switch, keep a 6os Long Battle Bow stuffed with Perfect Sapphires. If you have trouble finding a 6os Long Battle Bow, take any LBB that you find in mid-nightmare or later and use one of your socket quests on it. A 6-PSaph LBB will add 18 seconds worth of freeze time to your Frozen Arrow, making it positively godly (5 seconds of Freeze even in Hell with no other gear :shocked:). LFury and Plague give you killing skills, Freezing Arrow gives you crowd control. Additional points can either go into Charged Strike for a bosskiller, they can go into Valk/Decoy for better tanking minions, they can go into D/A/E for more security, or they can go to Pierce for more fun with Lightning Fury.

I've beaten Hell with one who wore nothing but white or grey items (with the exception of one Smoke runeword armor and magical/rare jewelry, since there's no such thing as white rings or amulets). She used some white Amazon-specific javelins with +3 Javskills, a 6-PSaph LBB, a 3-PDiamond Large Shield, a +2 Zonskills amulet, a Smoke runeword armor, some rings with resistance on them, and a 3os tiara stuffed with PSapphires to help with my mana issues.

You wouldn't realize it, but I've read a lot of your guides over at the Amazon Basin and here, so I've gotten some pretty crazy ideas in my head. And I have the same taste for slightly off or uncommon builds that you do.

That seems like a very viable build for hell using the proverbial cracked javelin. I've found that some builds which I think are viable don't always turn out to be once they get to hell difficulty. Now that I've become more familiar with items and rune words, I find out there are lots of little things to exploit, and sometimes the exploits or oddities are enough to base successful characters around. :smiley:

It's a lot of fun going against Bnet trends. I sometimes wish my friends would understand what I'm doing with half of my characters. My friends keep offering to get me a Windforce or "better bow" (like Lycander's Aim, Goldstrike Arch, etc.) than what my Witchyzon is currently using. They don't realize that she was built specifically for that bow, and so substituting any other bow (including my Harmony on switch) makes her a misfit. :/ Every character is like a little plant growing in the garden which requires special care and attention to meet its needs.

[AnimeCraze]

My friends keep offering to get me a Windforce or "better bow" (like Lycander's Aim, Goldstrike Arch, etc.) than what my Witchyzon is currently using. They don't realize that she was built specifically for that bow, and so substituting any other bow (including my Harmony on switch) makes her a misfit. :/ Every character is like a little plant growing in the garden which requires special care and attention to meet its needs.Maybe, but when you slap a WF on a witchyzon and realized she kills faster even though she was build tailored to an upped WWS...... Let's just say that I immediately rebuilt her after that.

I also keep harmony on switch even after I am using WF for unbreakable PI's, running, letting my faith merc catch up, and prebuff valk.

Anyways, to OP, I personally would say that a harmony zon is probably 1 of the best for low budget. You can always keep it on switch even after you get a killer bow. For untwinked though, I would probably go for a javazon of some kind.

[maiku]

Maybe, but when you slap a WF on a witchyzon and realized she kills faster even though she was build tailored to an upped WWS...... Let's just say that I immediately rebuilt her after that.

Without a high % of Critical Strike (an investment of 10-15 points) and more strength to take advantage of the Windforce, I see it is as unsuited for her. You're wasting an exceptional bow on the wrong build. (IIRC, her base strength is around 60 or 70 and the rest is added with items.) It's the same problem when she uses any non-WWS bow. WWS gives her 80% Deadly Strike right now (and this will keep going up as she levels) and allows me to run and keep up with friends who have Windforces. They've gone for lower dex, because they don't need to squeeze as much out of the bow as I do. And I will admit she is totally unsuited for PvP. I would build a WF zon quite a bit differently than I would a Witchyzon, with higher strength and different equipment and different skill placement depending on how I felt it worked best with the Windforce. There's no arguing that Windforce is a better bow in the end, but it's not affordable for many players. I'm pretty sure I could purchase a Windforce or two on the realms if I sold my Herald of Zakarum, because I've seen Windforces being sold for Ists. But considering that my Witchyzon offers a lot of bang for her few bucks, I don't see a need to create the ultimate bowazon. I just need one who's fun and fast at clearing areas like the Pit and Tower so I can get runes and items to continue my weird experiments. :azn:

I also keep harmony on switch even after I am using WF for unbreakable PI's, running, letting my faith merc catch up, and prebuff valk.

Anyways, to OP, I personally would say that a harmony zon is probably 1 of the best for low budget. You can always keep it on switch even after you get a killer bow. For untwinked though, I would probably go for a javazon of some kind.

Yes, I use my Harmony a lot for that as well. My friend and I overran hell Diablo and his minions last night in a Chaos Sanctuary run, and it was fun to see his 12 skeletons clear the map so quick with Vigor in effect. They swarmed everyone instantly, so we didn't have to wait for them to plod along.

[AnimeCraze]

Without a high % of Critical Strike (an investment of 10-15 points) and more strength to take advantage of the Windforce, I see it is as unsuited for her. You're wasting an exceptional bow on the wrong build. (IIRC, her base strength is around 60 or 70 and the rest is added with items.)Hence the rebuilding part. I did so again after getting merc faith and anni. I love my (now NL) YRP zon.:tongue: (zon = Yuna/rogue = Rikku/valk = Paine)

Anyways, it was back then last last ladder where WF's are a "mere" Ist (and HR's are rampant). I understand what you mean by squeezing her though (which I still do even with the WF). Max/AR charms, low vit, lots of IAS, negative resist......

To OP: One thing I forgot to mention, if you are playing a javazon, look into shopping for a lower resist wand. It can help with some immunes, and can punish bosses quite bad.

[Reis]

maiku. question for you, I made a harmoy(about 180+) max damage and 80+ min damage in a mat bow, I found it to be low, will the elemental damage make up for it for fast'ish pit running? Thanks in adance.

[maiku]

As long as you get about 1K damage with the bow on the LCS (lying character screen), have decent to great Critical Strike, and especially if you can get an Atma's Scarab (which is my recommendation for even a Harmony bowazon), I think you'd doing about as much as a Witchyzon does. If you get to 1.4K+ damage, which I imagine is possible with high dex, War Travelers (adds 10-25 damage, which ends up being much more; if worried about price, buy the lowest crappiest ones available, what interests you is the 10-25 damage and other good stats like +str and +vit), and +max damage charms, you will probably do more damage than the average Witchyzon.

My Harmony Blade Bow rolled 240% ED and is 150ish max. The LCS (lying character screen) shows my damage to be about 1.3K with my merc's Might aura. (Although this may be more damage than I'm really doing because I'm also wearing Treachery, and I think it adds Venom's poison damage to my damage total on the LCS.) Yes, it works well for Pit running in my experience and you'll get addicted to Vigor. If you need extra punch, try putting on a pair of Laying of Hands for demon beatdown: 350% extra damage to demons. Most of the kiddies in the Pit and Tower are demons. Too bad for them. :hanky: