How many points in Strafe?

[droid]

I have a passion (eventually silence) medusazon with 6 hard points in strafe, enough just to get the max targets. I figured the extra ed (off weapon ed too) you get for maxing wasnt worth the points for my build, which is more about the slow/blind/flee debuffs and cb/ow than pure physical damage, my merc (A1 cold, eventually with Ice) and valk do more damage than my zon.

Is there a reason to pump it up higher though, other than more ED? I was reading something about it doing more shots to single targets at level 20....how does strafe work when there's less than the max amount of targets in range?

Should I go ahead and max it, or is there not really a reason to? I have +3 bow skills on my bow right now too, so its actually L9. I'm L72 right now with IIRC 4 points unspent, I was just pumping up all my passives right now to the point of diminishing returns...

[NASE]

If there are less then the maximum number of monster in range, strafe will hit every monster once. Now assume that there are less monsters then minimum number, strafe will again try to hit all monsters until it reaches it's minimum number, or until there are no more monsters after which it will again start with hitting all the monsters until it hits the minimum number.

So therefore, putting strafe is important when you are facing not that many monsters, somewhere like 3. At slvl 20, all monsters will be hit twice, at slvl 9, all monsters will be hit once - and perhaps one twice.

So is it worth more points? Yes, you are a pure bowazon and the passives simply are not useful enough or hit diminishing return that fast that putting more then a couple of points generally isn't worth it. Then strafe is the best option.

Now, I can't tell you if you have to start putting points in strafe first, or first in your passives. Generally, offensive is more important, however, if you feel that your pierce - slvl 9 with razortails is advised - , valk or decoy aren't strong enough, consider putting more points in them first.


P.S. Did you follow the /2-strafe-myth?

[droid]

you kinda lost me there...are you saying strafe will always fire the max amount of arrows, split up evenly among however many monsters are on screen? So there's no point in putting more than 6 points in it, other than for a weak 5% ed per point?

whats the /2-strafe-myth?

[NASE]

Try the summit. It should contain all the information about strafe.
http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/amazon-bow.shtml#strafe
In short it comes down to this. If you want to use strafe as a single/dual target skill, putting more points in very useful. If you don't, each target might only be hit one or twice. On the other hand, if you are only using strafe as a skill for huge hordes - +10 - then only the maximum number of arrows is important, something you have with 5-ish points.

For more information about the /2 strafe myth, you will have to do a search here or on the amazon basis.
In short it comes down to the fact that there isn't such a thing like a /2 strafe. The fastest you can go is /3. However, your client will still picture it as /2 - you will see her shoot fast though for the server, the arrows are shot slow. This means that going overboard on ias on a pure strafeazon is useless or perhaps even a bad thing - still don't know what I have to think about it.

[Omikron8]

0 or 20

a low level strafe won't do much against single targets/bosses compared to level 1 guided arrow

as for crowds that are not too spread out multishot easily beats even maxed strafe

[NASE]

as for crowds that are not too spread out multishot easily beats even maxed strafe

And if they are spread out, a one points strafe - assuming some +skills - will be more effective then both multishot and guided arrow.
They all deserve one points, no matter what bowazon you build you are making.

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

I suppose it depends on the rest of your build's skill points. For example, if you want to mainly use strafe but you want an elemental offensive bow skill to compliment it for physical immunes, like frozen arrow, then going for max-number-of-shots (low strafe) is fine. Synergies for frozen arrow will be heafty, and do great damage. I mean, frozen arrow can break 1k+ pretty quickly, with a 1~2 damage short bow from normal. You can do huge damage with elements like that. Strafing to blind/fear things is fine. You just won't do a lot of damage without the big runewords/physical damage setups. Personally, I'd just use Silence to blind them and use Frozen arrow to kill them.

Cheers,

[xtreme paladin]

0 or 20

as for crowds that are not too spread out multishot easily beats even maxed strafe

You said it correctly. Just 1 point in Strafe is enough in my opinion. The +skills will further increase Strafe. Use GA/Multi as your main attack and Strafe as a back up skill if they are all scattered around. My sequence of attack is always Multi, Strafe then GA or Multi and GA all the remaining ones that survived multi. For physical immunes, just use magic arrows.

[KremBanan]

For me, Strafe isnt about max arrows shot. Its about minimum arrows shot. I like to have the minimum arrows maxed.

[Omikron8]

a low level strafe won't do anything against bosses really, pretty much the same as regular auto-attacking

and guided arrow even when maxed is crap compared to maxed strafe

you might as well get both max strafe and high level multishot, there's not much else you are going to dump high points into as a bowazon

once i get sufficient damage, leech and IAS i run around with multishot 99%+ of the time

[0blique]

I never knew about the /2 myth until now. Good to know before I start setting up my equipment. Out of curiosity, is this in the sticky at the top of the forum? I didn't see it when I was looking through it.

On topic: I've found lvl 5+ strafe to be fairly effective. Once you get 10 max arrows, it does a fairly good job against large or medium packs, or even against 1 on 1 encounters, although this could be because I have lower standards than others. Of course, more points = more damage, so if you have the points, then you might as well.

[NASE]

Last time I checked, the /2 strafe myth isn't mentioned in the stickies nor is it mentioned in that main posts of the breakpoint tables - it is however mentioned at the last post of the tables, though who looks there.

The problem is that those who want to get it up-to-date don't aren't mod, and those that are clearly lack the time to change it.

[Kijya]

Fixed it for bows, sorry about taking so long, not like it was much work to mention it in the tables, just never got done ...




I'll throw some small thoughts in, my math might be off though.


At unbugged fastest 9/3 strafe speed the frames/arrow vs single targets follow the function:

Y = (6 + X * 3) / X

where x is the min arrows (increased every four levels)

X Y
2 5.00
3 4.50
4 4.20
5 4.00
6 3.86
7 3.75

If we let

G = (current - next) / current

then:

X G
2
3 0.10000
4 0.06667
5 0.04762
6 0.03573
7 0.02777


Comparing level 8 (x = 4) to level 20 (x = 7) you gain about 17% to your arrows/second.

:scratchchin:

I'd say, if you strafe often vs single targets, got for max. If you have lots of spare points and nothing to spend them on, go for max. If the 5% ed per level is enough of a boost in your opinion, go for max.

If not, well strafe can do fine without maxed min arrows. A shorter strafe will allow you to reposition more often, aka less risky to use vs dangerous bosses and super unique. Since your restarting the strafe more often, a dodge will make fewer arrows miss.

Today I like my 4 arrow strafe, short burst followed by repositioning, fits my playstyle.