Classic Bowazons

[OnWingsOfLead]

Does people still go with guided arrow / multi shot?

Havn't played classic since .09XD

[Arkansaw]

Nope, bowazons were badly nerfed across the board since 1.10
Try hammerdins

[OnWingsOfLead]

So there really arent any decent bowazon builds?

Screw hammerdins, one of the reasons I quit lod to come back to classic.

[Arkansaw]

There is a bowazon build in the stickies: http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=401759

haven't tried myself tho

[OnWingsOfLead]

Yeah saw that one, but man I miss the days of twitch and just laying waste to hundreds of cows with multishot :/

Oh well, I think ima try a icearrow build or some ****.

[HegemonKhan]

elemental bow zons are much easier to use and make. being that the damage is elemental so u jsut need +skills for more elem damage.

but phys bow zons are 100% gear dependant. u really need a near perfect damage bow/xbow to kill stuff since amazons don't get much bonus to damage except by pumping dex since all bows/xbows alredy have low damage. critical strike skill, high damage bow/xbow, high dex, damage mods like CB/OW/+min dam/+max dam/poison, high weapon speed, high IAS gear, high AR/to hit, etc is REQUIRED for a bowzon to kill in late hell difficulty, and bow zons really benefit from party skills like paladin's concentration/might/fanatic/ blessed aim/conviction/etc and sorc's enchant and other party skills.

strafe is probably the best bow skill. long as u got speed and 95% to hit and good (high) damage and damage mods like CB and etc.

magical arrow is magical+phys damage and it KILLS very well. but this is a class unto itself being magical damage.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i wrote a few posts more in depth on phys bow zons but im too lazy to look for them unless u ask (want) me to for u.

[OnWingsOfLead]

Hm, so with elemental bowzons does it matter DMG of bow? Or would you rather try for fastest?

[HegemonKhan]

depends

1. if u want pure damage to be elem than to boost the elem damage u need IAS and +skills and -resists to monsters and AR (unless skills are autohit, not sure anymore, i think with newest patch they now take AR for the phys arrow damage but for the elem from the skill it may be autohit so u don't need AR for elem damage. not sure. have to ask some one who knows)

2. if u wanna do phys and elem damage than u need a good damage bow/xbow and any other way to boost phys damage if u want to and/or u can jsut boost the elem damage instead along with whatver phys damage u do from dex and weapon and whatever.

* 3 options for #2.

2A. boost the phys damage more than elem damage
2B. boost the elem damage more than phys damage
2C. balance boosting the two damages, phys and elem
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
*at least the frozen arrow (lvl 30 cold bow skill, hopefully i named the skill right) skill is very mana expensive so u might wanna do some decent phys damage just for leeching back mana. lots of poeple use strafe for leeching back mana with frozen arrow skill. not sure how mana expensive the fire skills are (i haven't really tried one yet).

[fledgeling]

I have a high damage gothic bow on my elemental amazon and with pure energy the mana bulb seems to be recharged only after a kill, not a successful hit - generally the mana leech behaviour of the cold dmg attacks seems to be very random. Id recommend a high damage bow to leech as much mana and life as possible.
Im in the process of leveling my cold+high dex amazon ("the slow way") - and with good gear she is doing quite well in nightmare, but well.. that's only nightmare..

[OnWingsOfLead]

Im going threw nightmare myself now, in act 4, did every quest along the way. Witch crap gear to add to that.

Like you said though, only nightmare ;_;

[sumzy]

They're still pretty good if you can find a 150%ed bow with ias. For a double/razor 8fpa you need 20 ias + goldwrap, for a rune/small siege you need 20 ias and for a gothic/large siege you need 10 ias.

Wear twitch and howltusk (unless you have knockback on bow) and stack min/max dmg and dex/str with rings/ammys/boots.

Few points in valk, few in the avoids, mainly the middle one, max guided and about 16 in cs and some in multi. Don't bother with any other skills just build on those.

For stats just go enough str for bow with eq then pure dex or a mixture of vit/dex don't got pure vit though you won't do enough damage.

[Akse]

Yeah barb also owns everything in nm.. but in hell a4 things are different. I don't get it why didn't they put some synergy to skills like whilrwind, strafe, multishot, guided? Those are now so inferior compared to sorc, pala skills.

[HegemonKhan]

i think u kinda have to think of it this way for the amazon:

the paladin has the most party enhancing abilties (doh).

but the amazon NEEDS party enhancing abilities the most!

solo phys damage (strafe or ms) bowzon (excluding magical arrow skill) is really weak. give her a bunch of party enchancing abilities and she can be very strong. fanaticism, might, concentration, enchant, blessed aim, conviction, LR, etc...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
*also the 3/4 (~100% 20 slvl strafe - 25% penalty on strafe = only ~75% bonus damage from 20 slvl strafe) damage on strafe and ms shoulda been removed...or put in bows that do more damage. *the 3/4 is also on ms too*

*ww does NOT need synergies....it is NOT inferior...if anything it needs to be nerfed in classic at least like in LOD with base weapons speed effecting ww speed.

*if u mean that the barb needs a way to be able to help (kill) in cs cuz all his skills do phys damage which isnt good cuz of IM, than i point out u can try to make a berserk barb or a war cry barb works very well in hell cs if u make it correctly.

[fredsta54]

the best bowazon build imo is fire/ice dual element you can soalo hell with it

stormstrike- the best bow imo gives you 25 peirce light resist ias etc.

20 xploding and fire arrow

20 cold and freezing arrow

enough pierce to give you 100%

rest to valk/d/e/a etc.

every arrow pierces so yes you can take care of groups quickly and effectively. Rare F/C immunes can be taken care of which a lvl8 valk (gives her lance)

btw dont waste ur time on immo arrow


-Fred

[OnWingsOfLead]

the best bowazon build imo is fire/ice dual element you can soalo hell with it

stormstrike- the best bow imo gives you 25 peirce light resist ias etc.

20 xploding and fire arrow

20 cold and freezing arrow

enough pierce to give you 100%

rest to valk/d/e/a etc.

every arrow pierces so yes you can take care of groups quickly and effectively. Rare F/C immunes can be taken care of which a lvl8 valk (gives her lance)

btw dont waste ur time on immo arrow


-Fred

Wish I would have read this sooner, I was thinking of doing it myself also.

But I put 2 points into stryfe :/. Oh well, I can still turn back! Im not going to remake, isnt like this char was meant to be perfect anyway. Already on hell.

[Akse]

*ww does NOT need synergies....it is NOT inferior...if anything it needs to be nerfed in classic at least like in LOD with base weapons speed effecting ww speed.

*if u mean that the barb needs a way to be able to help (kill) in cs cuz all his skills do phys damage which isnt good cuz of IM, than i point out u can try to make a berserk barb or a war cry barb works very well in hell cs if u make it correctly.
LOL are u serious ww needs to be nerfed? How many barbs u see soloing there? Maybe the few lucky ones with 300+ weapons and own enchanter with them. If base weapon speed would affect ww in classic, barb couldn't do a **** there. So instead of getting 190%+ ED you would also need 40% ias(which wouldn't be enough with slow weapons like martel, lance), LOL what are the odds. Besides there are no runes and gems to add ias.. so plz.

And yes it is inferior. Try to do 8 ppl river of flame with barb, then take a hammerdin.. or sorc, you see the difference. Every physical damage build suffered a lot in 1.10, one other thing is ironmaiden for necro, it's completely useless in hell, mobs regen faster than it does damage.

I'm not talking about leeching exp in CS, i'm talking about soloing river of flame like in 1.09. If pala can, sorc can do it imo it would be fair that everyone else could too. I don't know what class u play but I guess paladin and having barb a good ww would make them solo and not your BO bot's.

I've soloed 86 level mace barb so far and everything above 4 players starts to get really slow. 238 martel and goblin toes 1400 ww damage. I have many barbs from 1.09 with 1400 ww damage or LESS and they still did fine back then, now you need like 2000 at least 2500 would be nice. So where hammerdins and sorcs need shard + 3d shield barbs need to beat the ridiculous odds to get 190%ed+ weapon and maybe invest over 200 points to strenght which in HC is not always a good idea.

Well what can you do, as we tought LOD ruined this game in 1.08 it made it even worse in 1.10..

[Lorg]

Vouch.

Barbs should be able to clear river much easier than the current patch allows. Seriously, needing a 300 dmg martel with a titan build to clear river effciently in 5+ games is very wrong.

[HegemonKhan]

my bad, i wasn't speaking of hell river/cs 8 players trying to solo it. i was jsut saying in general, ww does a lot for a phys attack and can't be interupted, one of the best phys damage skills, at least for pvp.

i concur with everything lorg and and akse said.

but let add this onto it if i may:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
mentioned build, skills, and damage types :

1. hammerdin=blessed hammers=magical damage

*this skill does full damage. there is NO resistance/immunity to this skill because it has special ability of IGNORING undead magic resistance/immunity. there is only ONE monster that isn't undead with magic immunity, the wailing beast, which is only found in the sub levels between LK (lower kurast) and trav (travincal, however its spelled/called).

*this is the reason it can solo kill hell river/cs 8 players. it does lots of damage from skill and synergy and than enhanced by concentration and is UN-resistible/UN-immunible.

2. sorc=elem skills=elem damage

*all the sorcs main elem skills do huge damage from skills and synergies. however, from here on, it diverges from blessed hammer's magical damage. the sorcs skills work great on hell river/cs 8 players when its against the monsters who have least resistance to it. orb has trouble solo (1 player doing orb) on 8 players. 3+ orbers can clean up 8 players. but when the sorcs skills are against mosnters with high resistance or immunity the skills are useless. fire is useless as most are immune. lit is useless since most monsters are high resistant or near immune. only a FCR and +skill lit sorc with conviction is said to be able to do alright in 8 players hell river/cs. but thats using conviction (help from partys' skills).

3. barb=ww=phys damage

*with ww and wm (weap mast) maxed (20 sk pts), u do ~200% enhanced damage. this is the usual minimum. every 100 str u add on 100% more. the maximum is ~700% enhanced damage using a titan with ~500 str and maxed ww and wm (200%+500%=700%). i don't know how many times ww hits, but its a lot.

*but now we need a weapon:

~150 damage weapon (1 handers) times 200% = only 300 damage. this is way too low for hell river/cs.

~150 damage weapon (1 handers) times 700% = 1050 (if i did my multiplication right in my head) damage. this isn't bad.

~also CB and your wm's critical hit (2x damage) help, especially the critical hit 2x damage which would put the 1050 damage to 2100 damage. 2100 damage as lorg said is good for hell river/cs 8 players.

~200 damage weapon (weak 2 handers) times 200% = only 400 damage. this is way too low for hell river/cs.

~200 damage weapon (weak 2 handers) times 700% = 1400 damage. this isn't bad.

~also CB and your wm's critical hit (2x damage) help, especially the critical hit 2x damage which would put the 1050 damage to 2800 damage. 2800 damage as lorg said is good for hell river/cs 8 players.

~250 damage weapons ......

in hell difficulty, monster get phys resistance and phys drain. one of them can't be lowered. this makes phys damage less effective than in previous patches.

.......

i'm getting tired and i dont know how much longer the edit will last...soo.....

*as u can see its extremely complicated, making the comparisons between the damage types and monsters resistances/immunities impossible and futile and erroneous.

orb takes at least 3+ orbers add together to kill hell river/cs 8 players. i bet with 3+ ww barbs u can clear hell river/cs 8 players too. and/or partys' skills help like fanaticism, concentration, and/or might...etc..

and if magical damage (blessed hamemrs was resisted, than u would probably also need 3 hamerdins, but magical isn't resisted..which is why everyone uses hammerdins compared to any other skills/damage types).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
if u wanna read the rest of what i was gonna type let me know and i'll give the rest of it.

[HegemonKhan]

sorry for double post, but i feel its informative:

akse's quote:
"I've soloed 86 level mace barb so far and everything above 4 players starts to get really slow. 238 martel and goblin toes 1400 ww damage. I have many barbs from 1.09 with 1400 ww damage or LESS and they still did fine back then, now you need like 2000 at least 2500 would be nice." -akse
----------------------
*in the 1.10 they gave nm a 25% and hell 50% phys drain ability. there is NO way for u to counter this. there's also a phys resistance ability they gave nm and hell too, but i think this one is the one that can be countered by u (if i got them reversed, than my bad). what this means is that on nm u do 1/4 less damage and hell 1/2 less damage and u can do NOTHING about it. this matches up perfectly with akse's quote.

[Akse]

Yeah thanks Hegemon for clearing up :) I got a bit upset! It has been hell to solo there. But yeah ww is still good for PvP since I think they increased the amounth of hits it does in 1.10 (can someone confirm this?) to compensate the increased health of monsters. Didn't seem to do enough. Not sure about this but your weapon gets broken a lot faster and with sounds on it sounded like hitting a lot more after update to 1.10.

Big problem also seems to be when WW'ing big groups of monsters. When I ww just 1 it goes down fairly quick, but anything above 5 is painfull.. I guess the hits divide to a lot of monsters and not just the one. Also I think the monsters get to regen a lot more. Prevent monster heal is really good stat nowadays, have one 306 lance with it and it felt like killing a lot faster than one without.

That life leech nerf is quite painfull in hell also, the monsters hit a lot more, all kind of elemental attacks hurt a lot and you leech less :( You need at least 15% LL to be safe. Monster defence has also went up a lot. I remember having around 75%+ hit chance with about 2500 AR, now with that amounth u have like 65%.

[HegemonKhan]

a quick multiple responses:

1. in reading your post, made me wonder about ww a bit.

1A. lets say u use a range 5 (lance or doc do corbin? whatever its called. the most damaging pole arm) with ww. can the weapon hit multiple monsters, meaning that, can u hit multiple monsters that can fit within your 5 range or only 1? if your "lance" can't hit monsters at range 1 through range 5 than is there a point of range 5 vs range 1 weapon besides hitting longer (or "reach" for hitting casters in pvp) with a single ww since u have a range 5?

*for that matter, with a normal attack, can u hit multiple monsters if u stood next to one (range 1) but targetted a monster at range 5? would the "lance" pierce (do damage) through the 4 monsters, hitting them, and hit the last monster, all 5 monsters receiving damage?

* i'll try to draw this (picture applies to normal attack and ww) :

o is your char. x's are the monsters. ----- is your range 5 "lance"

range
0 1 2 3 4 5
o-x-x-x-x-x

2. LL (life leech) (and maybe ML=mana leech): a monster's phys resist stat (actual resistance to phys damage which is different from defense rating) means u do less damage which means less LL (and maybe ML too). than there's the weapon/gear leech penalty from difficulties. also i think monster's have individual resistances to leech (LL, ML) as well (possible called phys drain?)

2A. life tap (50% LL !!!!!!) (necro curse) is UN-affected by the difficulty penalty!!!! in hell from life tap alone u have 50% LL !!!!!!!!!!!!

2B. amp (and maybe decrepify too) (necro curses) breaks phys immunities.

2C. sanctuary (paladin skill) see links:

http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Paladin_Offensive_Auras#Sanctuary

http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=655435&highlight=sanctuary+guide

3. monster regen is probably the worst thing for u in trying to kill monsters. even with a monster's large life pool and defense rating and phys damage doing half in hell etc etc will not save it from getting killed by u. but monster's life regen will and DOES not only save it but even make the mosnter impossible to kill if your damage and speed of damage is too low. what good is doing damage when the monster completely heals it back before u can land the next blow. no good! (warcry with no FCR anyone?...good luck trying to kill monsters with it..monster regen will undo any damage war cry does because its WAY too slow without FCR items).

FCR (fast cast rate)

PMH (prevent monster heal) can be ("IS") godly in recent/newest patch (well actually 1.10+ but whatever).

4. ww speed (# of hits) : some one posted about ww's speed (# of hits) some where... i forgot where i found/read it. might not even been this site...no idea..