Cold Bowazon help

[Banjotron]

Hey. To start with, I'm a semi-regular D2 player. I usually get a character up to 86-90, then I get bored and quit. I often play weird builds too, just for variety. Some of them work out better than I expect (like my Defiant Zealot), while others are strangely fun but don't turn out so well (Inferno Sorc, anyone?).

Anyhow, I really like bowazons. With maxed valk and decoy and decent DAE, your valk is nigh indestructible even in A5 Hell, and your decoy can take a heck of a pounding too. I'm getting sick of strafe, though. Since I quit a lot, I never amass vast resources, so hitting the 2 FPA breakpoint on strafe is a pain. Without great gear, strafer damage is sorely lacking in large group games.

Since I doubt I'll get any farther as a strafer than I did the last three times, I want something new, even if it sucks. I'm thinking of going cold bowazon with the mav set. I'm going with mav because the set is relatively easy to acquire, yet still gives a lot of bang for your buck.

This is what I'm looking at for my build:

Attributes:
92 strength (the minimum needed to equip the whole mav set without additional bonuses)
rest into dex

Skills:
20 of all cold skills
20 of valk
1 of each magic/passive
remaining points into decoy as I level

I'm looking for any advice and comments that anybody has on cold bowazons. If you've played one, I'd love to hear any stories you have on how well the build worked for you. Advice on how to change my build is certainly welcome too.

Gear advice is welcome as well, but keep in mind that I'll be on a budget and probably will stick to the mav set. I'm not sure what to grab in the other slots, though. My main concerns are upping my mana leech and maxing my resists. What do you think is the minimum mana leech I'll need to pull this off, assuming base energy?

With <3,
Banjo

[Crying Freeman]

With <3,
Banjo

I loved it. Hehe.

Well usually , if you´re not using Insight merc, you will want about 15~20% leech, which can be solved by equipping a good Crescent Moon. Your M´avs belt already gives you 5%.
If you use a merc with Insight, you can dump the Crescent Moon for something more useful, like a +2 skills ammy with res and/or +life/mana.
I also advice the vit route instead of dexm since your damage will come from the elemental damage, not physical. AR is important, but with the dex you will have for your bow reqs, plus penetrate skill(max in later stages after the build is complete) you will have enough AR, usually.

[Banjotron]

I loved it. Hehe.

Well usually , if you´re not using Insight merc, you will want about 15~20% leech, which can be solved by equipping a good Crescent Moon. Your M´avs belt already gives you 5%.
If you use a merc with Insight, you can dump the Crescent Moon for something more useful, like a +2 skills ammy with res and/or +life/mana.
I also advice the vit route instead of dexm since your damage will come from the elemental damage, not physical. AR is important, but with the dex you will have for your bow reqs, plus penetrate skill(max in later stages after the build is complete) you will have enough AR, usually.

Hrm. Maybe you're right, and I'm still thinking too much like a strafer. It seemed like I never had enough AR when I used strafe before. Then again, I also don't really see the point of more vitality. Short of stuff like the game lagging to all Hell, I basically never died as a strafer. Aside from Hell D and Hell Baal, the only thing which would kill my valk was if it ended up grabbing the entire Lister pack on 8 man Baal runs on Hell. I'll think about it, though.

On another note, is Cold Arrow useful at all as an attack? What does the half damage bit mean? The combined physical and converted % frost damage is only half of what the arrow would normally do, then the bonus frost damage is added on top of that? So does ice arrow become the primary single target attack, in that case?

[DH Amazon]

On another note, is Cold Arrow useful at all as an attack? What does the half damage bit mean? The combined physical and converted % frost damage is only half of what the arrow would normally do, then the bonus frost damage is added on top of that? So does ice arrow become the primary single target attack, in that case?



Never used cold arrow (in hell), so don't know if its good enough. Usually for FA-zon, those single ones are cold immunes or some kind of bosses/champions. There ar-boost/or autohit (GA) is nice.
No sure if that ar from cold arrow is bugged or not. If bugged then better use other attack.
If single monster is not cold immune and you have plenty of mana, use FA, if mana goes too fast, use MA (magical attack) to leech mana back.


You have nice amount of magical damage from set, with Mavina FA-zon, I used 1-point magical attack for single ones too boost that magical damage even more. Saves arrows and low mana cost.
So you can full your mana at same time.
And with this MagicalAttack, you can kill those that are both Cold and Physical immunes. No need Atma's if you use this skill, so you can use mana leech amu (crescent moon).

And with Mavina set, good critical and high penetrate (good ar) helps with mana problems at least a little. Still quite low damage in that bow.



With WF based FA-zon, I ended killing single one with FA as mana leech was no problem, I even killed single cold immunes with FA, lazy to change skill and those dropped nicely even in full games. Even cold immune Lister.
Baal was only single target where FA (mana problems) was not working properly, so other attacks needed there too.

[VoX Dei]

CI solution options using Mav's:

1) Cold tree + passives: relies on the set low physical and magic damage to kill CI's. Slow solution. Personally dislike this weak solution.

2) Strafe + Cold tree + passives: still non-optimal but this is faster then the first solution with the added benefit that strafe is a great way to refill blue bulb to keep using FA. An all around decent solution. Works great at p1.

3) Fishyzon: FA/LF/CS all benefit greatly from +skills and any CI can be insta-fried with the lightning skills. However, this is very mana intensive (even with Insight merc) and you'll loose your glow on java side. The best solution, but keep in mind also the most mana intensive.

Just some food for thought.

I'm getting sick of strafe, though. Since I quit a lot, I never amass vast resources, so hitting the 2 FPA breakpoint on strafe is a pain.

2 fpa strafe is a myth. It exists server-side but not client-side. Meaning 3pfa is as fast as you can get. This also implies reaching 3fpa strafe bp is very easy.

Cold Arrow converts physical damage to cold damage and adds a little cold damage on top. Example: if you have a bow dealing exactly 1k physical damage and slvl20 Cold Arrow (41% conversion), then you'll be dealing 590 physical damage and 410 cold damage + the added cold damage. Fire and Magic Arrow work the same way. All of these skills require high damage bows rather than +skills.

[Banjotron]

2 fpa strafe is a myth. It exists server-side but not client-side. Meaning 3pfa is as fast as you can get. This also implies reaching 3fpa strafe bp is very easy.

I think I'm going to cry. You're telling me I was chasing something that was impossible all this time? Actually, hold on. Now that I think about it, I'm certain I've seen other bowazons shooting what _appeared_ to be a 2 fpa strafe. It was certainly faster than mine. In fact, now that I really think about it, I know I've seen what was very clearly a significantly faster strafe whenever fana went up on my strafers. I've had 3x lvl 88-90 strafers by now, and I've seen it several times.

Anyhow, I'm definitely not buffing strafe on a cold bowazon build. I'm point-starved as it is. I know a lot of people swear up and down that decoy is useless, but I've found raising it to sufficient levels to be beyond invaluable. A weak decoy pops in one hit, but with the right amount of points, its survivability goes up by an order of magnitude. Lets assume I've got +6 to magic/passives. The difference between 1 point in decoy and 17 points is the ability to absorb roughly 12 times more elemental damage. Those extra points also increase my valk's survivability by a factor of about 1.8 against physical attacks and a factor of over 5 against elemental attacks.

[KremBanan]

Actually, hold on. Now that I think about it, I'm certain I've seen other bowazons shooting what _appeared_ to be a 2 fpa strafe.
That is correct. It only _appeared_ as 2fpa Strafe.

[stillman]

I tried numerous FA zons but I always gave in to temptation and went back to raw physical damage.

But here is something you might want to try or just read for fun. I made a hc FA zon with just about every point into life. She used pus spitter for the ctc lower resist, and for the fact that it's a low requirement and cheap crossbow. I used insight on merc to never worry about manna running out. It's fun playing in hell mode and you can kill stuff fast enough to not be annoying...

That is until I ran into cold immunes and lots of them. The little lower resist curse didn't seem to handle the cold immunes they way I had hoped. I gave up on her, but I think with some more riches she could have done better.

[DH Amazon]

But here is something you might want to try or just read for fun. I made a hc FA zon with just about every point into life. She used pus spitter for the ctc lower resist, and for the fact that it's a low requirement and cheap crossbow. I used insight on merc to never worry about manna running out. It's fun playing in hell mode and you can kill stuff fast enough to not be annoying...

That is until I ran into cold immunes and lots of them. The little lower resist curse didn't seem to handle the cold immunes they way I had hoped. I gave up on her, but I think with some more riches she could have done better.

Pus Spitter, gives only lvl1 low resist, its -31 and last 20 seconds (in norm).
And radius is only 4.6 yards (but way better than atmas, as 5%, lvl2, radius 2.6yards and 11 sec duration).
And usually you can't break cold immunes as almost all cold immune monster have over 150 resist.
So lots of other elemental damage is needed to make bow more viable.

That bow has -60%, so upped version have 47str and 42 dex requirements. Upped version has max physical damage 80-278 and norm has 64-134.

Mana leech with upped version should be quite good, as its has high ar boost too.
I would use dream shield for this kind of ama. And strafe to leech back mana from cold immunes.

For fun build and strafe based, it could be nice. Dream+Dragon for both char and merc, faith merc. Highlords, Thunderbelt and Lava Gout give some elemental damage too.

But those crossbows are so Slooow (50 ias with fana for 11fpa and and that 50 should give frame 4 strafe even without fana. Not sure what is 1st bugged speed for crossbows)
50=Highlord, Lava gout and 10 from bow, at leas that is easy to get, so socket from bow is free or anything (facets etc...)

[Banjotron]

There's only one thing bothering me now, gearwise. Skills like FA only really shine with very high piercing.

Is there any conceivable way to get bonus piercing from gear with the full mav's set on?

I don't know of any unique or set rings, amulets, or boots which give it, and I'm pretty sure runes, gems, charms, and jewels can't drop with it either.

How about crafted or rare boots/ammy/ring? Is it possible to get piercing on any of those?

[VoX Dei]

There's only one thing bothering me now, gearwise. Skills like FA only really shine with very high piercing.

Is there any conceivable way to get bonus piercing from gear with the full mav's set on?

I don't know of any unique or set rings, amulets, or boots which give it, and I'm pretty sure runes, gems, charms, and jewels can't drop with it either.

How about crafted or rare boots/ammy/ring? Is it possible to get piercing on any of those?

AFAIK the answer is no. You have Razortail (33%) + missile weapons (bows/x-bows). Mainly x-bows.

[Banjotron]

Yeah, that sounds about right. I looked up all the possible mods.

I honestly didn't think super high piercing would be a huge deal, but now that I've actually tasted how well it synergizes with zon AoE, I'm hooked. Somebody gave me a kuko shakaku, and I think I'm in love. Oh well. Ten points into pierce + skills should get me low to mid 80's piercing, which I think I can live with.