Freezing Arrow build

[Ciwie]

Hello there. My friend and I are trying to find the perfect PvM (not expensive) Bowazon guide. My friend is really found of Freezing Arrows.


Anyone with experience with this?

Thank you!

[Dacar92]

I am writing a cold zon guide at this very moment, updated for the last runeword releases. Freya's guide in the stickies is a little dated but it still contains a lot of good info.. Meanwhile here are a few snippets:


20 Frozen Arrow
20 Cold Arrow
17 Valk
5 Penetrate
5 Pierce

A physical attack is recommended to deal with the glut of cold immunes you'll encounter. Many use strafe for this. Some may use Multi.

Mavina's set is OK for a coldzon. But the bow lacks damage. Ice runeword is a really nice bow for a cold zon. Amn, shael, Jah, Lo.

100% Chance To Cast Level 40 Blizzard When You Level-up
25% Chance To Cast Level 22 Frost Nova On Striking
Level 18 Holy Freeze Aura When Equipped
+20% Increased Attack Speed
+140-210% Enhanced Damage (varies)
Ignore Target's Defense
+25-30% To Cold Skill Damage (varies)
-20% To Enemy Cold Resistance
7% Life Stolen Per Hit
20% Deadly Strike
3.125-309.375 Extra Gold From Monsters (Based on Character Level)

Kind of expensive so until you can afford the runes there are several other bows to use. Mav's is cheap so that is why I recommended it earlier. You can also use Witchwild String, a very popular bow that, while it does have a little lower damage, the amp will really help with the physical damage.

More to come.......

[syndrohm]

Looks great Dacar, I have a level 90 "Frostmaiden" right now and that is the skill distribution I used. I decided on Strafe as my physical attack and it works great for life and mana leech. The mana leech is a life saver because that damn FA sucks the Mana right out of you lol. My gear is definatly expensive but I have Ice Matriarchal, CoH, frosties, Nightwings with a cold facet, and a crap load of charms with cold damage. With all of that I have -25% to enemy cold resistance, +50% to cold skills dmg, and a freeze duration of about 7-9 seconds in Hell. It is definatly the most enjoyable build I have and I play it all the time.

[Ciwie]

Thank you, Dacar92 and syndrohm! We're looking into it now. How about stats? :)

[TheDarkKnight]

Looks great Dacar, I have a level 90 "Frostmaiden" right now and that is the skill distribution I used. I decided on Strafe as my physical attack and it works great for life and mana leech. The mana leech is a life saver because that damn FA sucks the Mana right out of you lol. My gear is definatly expensive but I have Ice Matriarchal, CoH, frosties, Nightwings with a cold facet, and a crap load of charms with cold damage. With all of that I have -25% to enemy cold resistance, +50% to cold skills dmg, and a freeze duration of about 7-9 seconds in Hell. It is definatly the most enjoyable build I have and I play it all the time.

On Ladder right now I've got a Lvl 92 frostmadien with insight.

20 Frozen Arrow
20 Cold Arrow
20 Guided
1 Multi

17 Valk
5 Critical Strike

6 Unused Skilll points +5 More to be earned (giving up at Lvl 97)
Deciding between +11 to Strafe or a mix of CS/Penetrate/Strafe

Strenght as low as possible
Dex as high as possible
Vit at base (or more if you dont feel comfortable)
Energy at Base (tough in the beginning but worth it later, with cheap insight mana problems disappear)

Wearing Magewraith +15ml, tals mask, razortail (a must!), LOH, two rare rings one with +6 ll (obviously looking for a ravenfrost), sigons boots and armor and a rare +2 P/M +89 mana +33 lr ammy. Only one 4-8 cd sc so far but I havent tried to start building them up yet

Resists in Hell:
+19 fire
+ 5 cold
+ 25 lightning
-42 posion

Not Expensive AT ALL to build!

That gives me +25 mana leech and + 26 life leech lol!

I cant wait for your guide Dacar!!

Works well in NM and Hell is well still tough but fun, lots of running, gloams still kill me in two shots :-)

[lumpor]

I would say either max Valk or leave it at one. With only 1 point you can prebuff it to well over 17 so it gets that war pike. If you don't like pre-buffing, 17 after +skills is also good. But she gets lots of rare goodies after 17 too, so I would max her, after fa, ca and your immune killer/leecher of course. This build is light on the skill points anyway.

I wouldn't use coh on this build. Archers focus little on defense, so I would take a jewellers armor of bla bla that has 4 sockets, and socket it all with perfect cold facets.

The most important pieces of gear are "ice", nightwing, and razortail. Like dacar said, mavinas is great for the poor people, since the gloves get such a nice set bonus. If only they had that without the rest of the set, they would be great for this build

[Reininger]

[QUOTE=TheDarkKnight;6621200]On Ladder right now I've got a Lvl 92 frostmadien with insight.

20 Frozen Arrow
20 Cold Arrow
20 Guided
1 Multi

17 Valk
5 Critical Strike
---
Strenght as low as possible
Dex as high as possible
Vit at base (or more if you dont feel comfortable)
Energy at Base (tough in the beginning but worth it later, with cheap insight mana problems disappear)

QUOTE]

I like this thread/build a lot! four small q's:

1. I was wondering if pierce should be here. I heard a FA with pierce-proc double dmg/freezes mobs? This true?

2. Level 1 decoy in addition to valk? I myself am new to amazons (lvl 18), so what do you guys think? I know theres lots of running around with glass canons...

3. Strafe? I heard strafe is a must for most all bowazons. Even ones with FA. I read somewhere that going 1 point in guided arrow and using points that would otherwise go there on strafe/(some pts in)multi would increase *** kicking output. Truth?

4. On trait point allocations. Do bows in general require a lot of str? I know we should be dex heavy but how much str is enough for decent armor/weaps?

Cheers

[phor]

I'll take a stab at this (I'm no expert mind you...)

I like this thread/build a lot! four small q's:

1. I was wondering if pierce should be here. I heard a FA with pierce-proc double dmg/freezes mobs? This true?

Yes, Pierce is Godly for FA against groups, as the aoe damage goes off every time your arrow hits a mob. If the groups are tight enough, a single FA will apply its cold damage to a mob 3-4 times by piercing and hitting the mob directly behind the first, then the mob directly behind it, and so on...
Maybe he was building for a Buriza? (in which case you wouldn't need pierce)


2. Level 1 decoy in addition to valk? I myself am new to amazons (lvl 18), so what do you guys think? I know theres lots of running around with glass canons...

You definitely want a Valk. She is one of the best tanks in the entire game and you can use her to gather mobs into tight groups before starting your FA volleys.


3. Strafe? I heard strafe is a must for most all bowazons. Even ones with FA. I read somewhere that going 1 point in guided arrow and using points that would otherwise go there on strafe/(some pts in)multi would increase *** kicking output. Truth?

With FA, you'll want to concentrate on +skills gear for damage. This means that your attack rating will suffer. Since Strafe does not have an AR modifier, you'll struggle to hit mobs in hell with strafe as an FA bowazon unless you plan on changing out gear all the time or using a bow with ITD.

I personally think Guided is a much better choice for a secondary attack for the FA build because you don't have to worry about missing from low AR.
(in reality, FA is probably better paired with LF for a secondary attack instead of remaining in the bow tree since both LF and FA benefit from the same type of gear... but that's neither here nor there)


4. On trait point allocations. Do bows in general require a lot of str? I know we should be dex heavy but how much str is enough for decent armor/weaps?
Cheers
Untwinked, I'd say ~100 is the range you should shoot for. It will give you a lot of options.

[Reininger]

With FA, you'll want to concentrate on +skills gear for damage. This means that your attack rating will suffer. Since Strafe does not have an AR modifier, you'll struggle to hit mobs in hell with strafe as an FA bowazon unless you plan on changing out gear all the time or using a bow with ITD.

I personally think Guided is a much better choice for a secondary attack for the FA build because you don't have to worry about missing from low AR.
(in reality, FA is probably better paired with LF for a secondary attack instead of remaining in the bow tree since both LF and FA benefit from the same type of gear... but that's neither here nor there)

cool, more questions! So how am i gonna gain mana back if im popping off just one arrow? Does frozen arrow splash dmg proc leech stuff? I've heard that you should go multi or strafe once you've frozen a patch of mobs to suck mana/life back. --- but if i cant hit the damn things i guess im screwed? Is it really that hard to land shots in hell? If it is, how do I remedy? If it isn't, should i throw a few points into strafe or multi (and which one of the two! AUGH!) ?

Thanks and sorry to be the resident noob.

[phor]

cool, more questions! So how am i gonna gain mana back if im popping off just one arrow? Does frozen arrow splash dmg proc leech stuff? I've heard that you should go multi or strafe once you've frozen a patch of mobs to suck mana/life back. --- but if i cant hit the damn things i guess im screwed? Is it really that hard to land shots in hell? If it is, how do I remedy? If it isn't, should i throw a few points into strafe or multi (and which one of the two! AUGH!) ?

Thanks and sorry to be the resident noob.

When you say "you should go to strafe or multi once you've frozen a patch of mobs to suck mana/life back", you're probably talking about a build that does not use FA as their main source of damage. If you build a physical damage bowazon and use FA simply to keep mobs frozen, then yes, that advice is good...

You can only leech from the physical part of the damage with FA.
The elemental damage always hits, but the physical damage has to pass an AR check before you can leech from it.
So from 1 FA and pierce, you'll leech as many times as the physical damage hits, and only for the amount of damage that is physical.
It's very hard to keep your mana up with a FA build (I had 32% mana leech and ~80% pierce with my FA zon, but since my AR was so low, the physical part misses a LOT in hell. Plus everything has 50% damage reduction to physical in hell as well, so you'll only leech half as much as you did in Nightmare)

But that's what makes the build TheDK posted so great.
Use FA as your main source of damage with +skills gear to augment your damage, and then leech back health/mana with Guided arrow.
GA is a MUCH better source of health/mana leech than Strafe/Multi for that build because it always hits. You don't have to worry about having low AR.