mana problems

[Astilin]

I have a fishyzon (LF/CS and frozen arrow) that I really like. Problem is that frozen arrow sucks up SO much mana. Anything to do about this except insight and potions? I currently have a manald and around 300 mana. I assume that frozen arrow does not allow leach or does my bow just not do enough damage?

Thoughts?

[Shock]

Unfortunatly, insight and drinking blues are your only options. You can't really rely on leech since the physical part of your bow doesn't hit very often because of your low attack rating. Socketing your gear with mana after kill jewels/tir runes may help.

[Flayed One]

If you posted your gear that would help us in helping you out. For example - how much +mana per kill do you have? What bow do you use? and so on, and so on:wink:

[Lizardking]

I used some serious mana stuff back on my amazon. I used Gloom's trap, Silkweave, + mana jewelery, Spirit. Believe me, there not so bad, actually, i weard them @ my cowruns on nightmare on lvl 56 with 8 players =D

[BlushNine]

Fishyzon's is an excellent guide but not without its flaws. He recommends using mana/kill items which is fine in larger crowds and the first few shots take down most of them, especially with LF. The problem with this is when we thin the crowd out, 4 or 5 monsters won't die from a single shot anymore. Both LF and FA both rely on larger crowds to kill efficently and thus for mana return for items with mana per kill. Even Charged Strike is pretty expensive if you aren't leeching mana. Melody is a great +6 bows to enhance your FA damage but it also means you are trying to leverage more expensive shots against the same mana return if you try to mana steal.

Cold Damage portion of Freezing Arrow does not leech but the wooden arrow that carries it does. So yes, it maybe that your bow does not do enough damage on a given shot against the cost of the FA that you are spending mana on. Your FAs are doing tremendous damage even with no +skill items. What's more important? Doing even more damage on FA and running out of mana, or doing a little less FA damage and being able to keep doing it.


Larger Damage/Lower Speed/Less +Skill Bow.
Ignore Target Defense.
Attacking Rating (coming from +AR items, Dex or otherwise).
Pierce. For every time the arrow pierces and hits another target behind the first it will leech from that target.
Higher Mana Stolen per Hit.


If you can not get high enough attack rating for the wooden arrow to hit the target your best bet is to get a bow with ITD. There are Unique and Runeword bows that have ITD. What good is using a bow that gives you better FAs or really fast shot speed if you can not shoot them because of mana problems.

I don't know what your specific setup is but I will speculate and say bottom line

You need alot of mana leech around 10-15%
Your wooden arrows need to hit more often
They need to do enough damage


My Ice setup recommends stat distribution similar to a traditional Zon. High Dex which equates to both higher chance to hit and damage. This is more so that you can leech. Not because the wooden arrows will kill things. It's frosty payload will do that.

[Astilin]

Thanks for the input. At the moment my gear is as follows:
Shako with ptopaz
highlords
vipermagi (will be skullder's once I can use torch)
moser's with 2x pdiamond
titans
craptastic 2 bowskills bow on switch (perhaps wizendraw until i can make some RW)
ravenfrost/manald
silkweave
rare 2 java/20IAS gauntlets I found

I will probably put insight back on merc. I need to find a better polearm so it does more damage. I would like to make the Ice RW, but I can't afford it at the moment. What about Harmony in a nice bow? Its cheap and has nice ED. Would that help with leach?

[Shock]

Harmony is a great bow, but I don't think it will help much since your AR is so low. Why not switch the Highlords for a +2ama skills/+mana amulet and make melody in a +3 bow skills mat bow. The +6 to bow skills and pierce should increase your killing speed a bit, thus using less mana. Another option is to get to an amount of life you feel comfortable with and then start putting points into energy.

[KremBanan]

craptastic 2 bowskills bow on switch (perhaps wizendraw until i can make some RW)


If not using ICE, then I reccomend Wizendraw. The -35res is a beauty and will boost your killspeed. Shame it doesnt have higher physical damage.

[DH Amazon]

What about Harmony in a nice bow? Its cheap and has nice ED. Would that help with leach?

Just tested pits, chaos and baal with harmony (3 bow grand), didn't like it.
Kills fast enough, but need to use way too many bottles.
Only lvl78 ama, so low chance to hit. I have faith merc and quite high penetrate.
Liked that vigor part of bow, ama runs so fast (got more than 100 faster run from other items)

I go back to WF, so far only bow that leech more than lvl31...34 freezing arrow uses. And I can use 2nd raven, so damage drop is not high. Lvl31 freezing arrow (34 if torch) is still high enough, if you can spam as much you like.

This is FA/strafe ama, just gived harmony a chance, WF is better for this build anyway at least when I got more lvls. Builiding my 2nd FA zon around WF, 1st one was with FA&multi and quite high lvl valk+Vigor merc. This time FA&strafe low valk and faith merc.

Haven't tested ICE. That Wizendraw is nice too, but insight merc is must with it.

[smeer]

If LF/CS is your main attack, phoenix might be an option. I have phoenix on my LF zon and it works wonders.
If FA is you main attack the number of bodys left are probably too few for phoenix to be of any use