One of the ultimate Amazon builds and sucess of my HC Amazon. der=

[dusters]

One of the ultimate Amazon builds and success of my HC Amazon.

Disclaimer:
Do not take all the following as bragging in any way.

Introduction.

After nine months of retirement from last autumn I started to play Diablo once again. Summer has come and thus I have more spare time. I decided to start an Amazon like I did the first time I tried Diablo before four years. After reading all what is going on Battle net now it seemed that SP is a better choice for now. For more adrenaline and fun I chose HC using untweaked char on players 8 setting and I planned to use a crazy build.

About the Build.

It is same old dexazon, but with base vitality and base energy (of course).
(Dang, looks like this build is called glasscanon or something like that, just read it before posting this topic, oh, 9 months is a long time.)
Actually the build is not too crazy but IMO playing on the HC with base vitality and without any tweaking ought to be very challenging. As I told before I am back after 9 months so I am pretty sure that someone has done this build before; except this build is impossible on MP because of Pking. The goal stats at around mid nineties should be:

Strength – enough to wear hydra bows with bonuses given from items
Dexterity – as high as possible, should be 450 – 500+ with items
Vitality – Base
Energy – Base

Skill point goal allocation:

Valkyrie - 20 (The heart of this build)
Dodging skills – high enough to reach 50 percent with items
Critical strike – high enough to reach level at which next level gives only 1 percent more
Pierce – 1 point (I hope to find Buriza accidentally after few hundred Nm Meph runs)
Penetrate – enough to always have 85+ chance to hit


Multishot – 9 – 12 depending on mana resources
Guided arrow – 20

All spare points will go to decoy to increase Valk’s life.

Items:

Nothing much to say here, I will use all self found items on this char and for more difficulty I will do MF runs on 8 player setting too(I will do everything on 8 player setting).

Mercenary:

Act 2 NM offensive aka might merc for life!


Success so far:

I am at NM Act 4 now, but due to my great Valk I have no problems surviving here. NM ancients will be very tough, but I hope to buy or find a wand with Iron Maiden charges and while ancients will try to hurt my Valk, they should kill themselves. Of course the main goal is to beat the game as always and prove myself, that this build in HC without tweaking and 8 player setting is possible.

Walkthrough so far (I hope someone will find this interesting), if you don't have time for reading this long part, skip to conclusion at the end.

Act 1 Normal

Pretty easy as usual, stats mostly went to dexterity and some to strength. LE monsters are nasty, but they always are at Act 1.
Andy was a big pain with all her poison damage, but after 15 minutes or so she was sent back to burning hell. I got a bad nagel off her. I used the best javelin possible for this Act; cold rogue helped me a lot there.

Act 2

I switched to the bow with emeralds and later with TALs there. Defensive mercenary did vast amounts of damage to everyone so the Act was quite easy till Duriel. Skill points went to prerequisites for Valk and to dodging skills, also few to penetrate. Normal Duriel is usually one of the hardest monsters in the game for untweaked SP amazons and this was no exception. Thus Duriel required me to get level 30 for Valk and getting level 30 on Act 2 is very time consuming task even with 8 players setting. Anyway level 1 Valk did not help me much there, so I had to poison Duriel, come back to town and the repeat this for scores of times till he was dead.

Act 3

Now I was able to do fast Countess runs so I got a nice TalTalTal composite bow. Cold Iron Wolf mercenary helped me very much there and so did my Valk. As I levelled up, I increased strength a bit for a better armor and dexterity as usual. All skill points went to Valk, because she and merc was doing the most of killing in this Act. Meph was very tough, but he was not able to kill my Valk fast, so after 20 minutes or so his soul was lost (or his soul stone in this case). I got Tarnhelm off him.

Act 4

No changes regarding bow, stat points went to requirement for the plated belts and dexterity as usual. Skill points went to Valk and penetrate, and to prerequisites of guided arrow and it itself. All in the entire Act was easier than I expected, because Valk still done heavy damage to everyone. Diablo was tough, but my Valk was able to survive two Lightning Hoses and again after few dozens of minutes the Boss of the Act was down.

Act 5

Unpredictable change regarding the weapon – I found the Spineripper (the unique poignard) and after doing simple math I realized that I will do more damage with it than my bow!
So I put stat points to strength till I was able to wear Ancient armors with bonuses given from items and quickly got till Ancients.
Skill points went to the dodging skills, Valk and penetrate.
Since Spineripper is 1-hand weapon I made Ancients Pledge using 2nd quest reward (Being Amazon with very high Dex helps in cases like this for blocking). I changed merc to Barb and with fast bashing and smashing he helped me to reach the end of this Act even faster. During the Act I found the runes required for the King’s grace, so my Barb merc was proud and happy about his King’s Grace Great sword. Ancients were very easy and I was at low forties when I reached them. Lister the *** kicker got my barb merc down, but Valk was invincible to his gang; I switched back to the bow and Valk with my help got Destruction minions down. Baal was easier than Lister’s gang; together Baal and Lister’s gang took about 25 minutes, but I never was close to death with my about 150 HP. I got Rockstopper off Baal and it proved (and still proves in NM Act 4) great for my mercs.

Act 1 NM

Resists penalty did not hurt at all, because my shield, so NM did not bring any bad changes. Although zombies were doing much damage, I switched back to the bow when I met ones with nasty mods and managed to survive. After completing 1st quest I went back to Normal to do Baalruns until I reach low fifties. Skill points went to Valk to reach its maximum level, to the dodging skills and penetrate. All stat points from this Act and forward went to Dex. NM countess runs were too hard to do many of them and XP from them was not good enough to waste time. Andy was easier than expected, because Valk was maxed and I had about 40 poison resist. I was doing about 200 - 400 average damage with the Spineripper at that time including bonuses from charms. I got a very nice rare circlet from Andy, which gives 1 - 109 lightning damage.

Act 2 NM

I was still using the Spineripper and the TalTalTal bow on the tough monsters. Radament dropped me a nice armor for merc – Boneflesh. I changed my brave barb merc for an Offensive merc from this Act to make my Valk do approx 2k damage when she does critical strikes (Yea, Valk had much better damage than me and she still has at NM Act 4). At rocky waste I found a good +2 passive skills amulet, which actually was same as +2 all skills to me, because I used the bow rarely. One of the super unique monsters before Viper’s ‘stronghold’ dropped me a decent version of the Skin of the Vipermagi, so it is the best drop so far. Running around even with only 50 mf helps  The Act was easy, but some ‘swarms’ of skeletons at the tombs gave the first signals of possible dying in the later Acts, because they got me down to 20 HP few times when I and was driven into a corner and barely escaped to the town via portal. Duriel was easy and dropped nothing of value.

Act 3 NM

Yeah! Real shooting started when I bought Glowing short war bow of slaughter (1-161 lightning dmg, 17 to max dmg)! Skill points went to the multishot and penetrate. The monsters at this Act were noticeably harder to kill and my merc started to die quite often (about 20 times in whole Act). Meph took like 30 minutes, but they passed fast when I watched that my Valk dies very rarely to Meph.

Act 4 NM

Nothing special changes there. I do not have strength for Gothic Bows (I changed my STR charms to cold and lightning dmg charms when I found the Skin of the Vipermagi), but when Jamella’s shop will yield any good Gothic Bow, it won’t be problem to change the charms back. Doom Knights are easier than I expected and I have 88% chances to hit them with my 4.8k AR and all goes fine. At the time of the writing this topic I was being done Izzy quest and I have a nice fire resist stuff in stash for Diablo.

Conclusion.

I hope that I will beat the game with this crazy build; now at Act 4 NM I am level 63 with following stats and stuff:

84 STR with items
301 Dex with items (4.8k AR with penetrate)
25 VIT and with items my life is 301
15 Energy and with items my mana is 108

Items:

Skin of the Vipermagi
Rare circlet with 1-109 lightning damage and 4% ll
Glowing short bow of Slaughter (1-161 lightning dmg, 17 max dmg)
Sander’s boots (I like running fast :lol: )
Plated belt – 28 fire res, 35 life
Gloves – Venom Grip
Rings – Manald and Nagel
Amulet - +2 passive skills

Damage 108 – 582

P.S.
I did not mention all the usual stuff I found at early Acts like cathans and etc., because I think it is not worth mentioning.

Any comments, suggestions warmly welcome. Sorry for all the grammar and spelling mistakes, there ought to be quite many since there are a lot of text.

Cheers, Dusters

P.S.

Is Kirtsy really gone? She was the heart of the Amazon forum and always helped everybody. Also she was the only real amazon since looks like the most of the Diablo 2 players are boys or men.
Looks like that mod, who had that funny bear driving his car as avatar is gone too. Oh, good old days before 9 months and all time during these 4 years of my Diablo 2 life. At least I have noticed that there are less newcomers asking stupid questions, so bravo to all mods

[sequoia]

great read, and congratulations on working one of the hardest HC builds :clap:

[superdave]

guided arrow no longer pierces....as you know this is what made the buriza such a hot xbow.....i did see kirsty pop in an make a quick post in a thread back in april or march

[slap]

hi...amazons are great fun to play...my h/core untwinked babe is not far of level 82.

i just want to warn you. when you go to hell mode, you will find that just 1 needle or arrow that hits you can do up to a 1000 damage. my lifeforce is 1200 and a few times it has dropped to about 100-200 after a hit. i progressed to act2 last week..but...i had lots of trouble with act 1 ranged attacks..becareful with such low lifeforce.

[HCTwinJava]

you have a chance to survive any hit in Hell. if that chance is x%, then you have a chance = 1-x% to die under any hit in Hell. With 1K+ hit points and nice gear, x% can be maximized to nearly 100% for Hell. With 1/3 of 1K hit points, you may have serious troubles even in NM act 5.

Hell act 1/2/3 are significantly easier than Hell act 4/5 (assuming you do the quests the hardcore way), though much harder than NM act 5. For a bowazon, there really isn't any real challenge up to NM act 4 - the only possible exception being Norm Diablo if you try to take on him around lvl 25 (hardly possible if you do all quests).

Since you play SP, you'll just need to save often when playing HC (sorta cheat). So, base vita with a very small life orb may be okay with your zon even for play in Hell. If you play on HCL, no way can the type of zon you've been playing survive Hell on her own - she can survive only if she gets tons of help.

Gl.

[Dacar92]

You may find that "players 8" is too hard for this build, in hell. I have always backed off the "players" setting when I play hell SP. The only character who I have played, who can handle hell at more than players 2 is my meteorb sorc. That is because of the huge damage meteor can do. I play her at about players 4-6, depending on the run.

Keep us informed as to your progress in hell mode. If you do it, you will deserve much kudos. Maybe even a prize.

[dusters]

NM Act 4 after Izzy quest

Hellforge was unlucky like Normal one, El rune then and Io now. Maybe it is a sign for ist+ in the Hell :cool: Chaos sanctuary was quite easy, except usual problems with IM. Diablo was not very hard, since I have 5% CB on the gloves, which results as 2.5% on the bow, which was still noticable. On the other hand Diablo got me down to approx 10 HP once, when he imprisoned me and Lightning Hosed me. His evil forces are real pain at 8 players setting. If Blizzard will make Diablo use only Lightning hose and Twisty lines, and make him cast prisons all the time, and remove all the other attacks, he will be much much taugher, maybe almost impossible to kill.
Valkyrie showed her best again by surviving one full Hose and dying only when hit by the second.

I started Act 5, but since the best part for reading will be about Ancients and Baal, and I am only at the quest two now, I will write about Act 5 tomorrow or as soon as possible.

@Dying warnings

I have calculated damage of Ancient who throws axes, and the result is much higher than my life, so Ancients will be very challenging.
Although playing so far took me approx 50 hours, I will better start over than save with ATMA, because so far playing has been great and I have lots of spare time till july.

@Dacar92

Well, I think any build, which can take Hell players 1, at any circumstances can take Hell 8 players. How much time and effort it will take, that's the other question. There is a big difference when playing HC build on home comp, which I have very stable,
and playing HC on Battle.net, where I can loose connection, get Pked while playing at 2 am and so on :lol:

[dusters]

Act 5 NM (long, but there were some very exciting events I just can not resist to write)

So finally I was here, where all fun is supposed to start in bigger amounts. Larzuk did not have any good stuff at the first visit, but he granted me great items in the further visits. I had only 30 Lightning resist at the time I ventured to the bloody foothills, so these modified monsters from the other Acts almost taught me a lesson to not to dare to try this Act with 30 Lightning resist. In this case these monsters were quill rats (who said that Hell quill rats can kill high level sorcs from 1.09 in a few hits ) and Slingers with lightning attack. After I was brought down to approx 100 Hp few times, I started to explore with my switch equipment on and only when my Valk or mercenary enclosed these monsters I switched back to the bow. My fire and cold resists were near to 75, so at least I did not have problems with fire shooting gremlins and corrupted rogue archers using cold attack.
Not long after the second quest, when shopping for potions and stuff, Larzuk surprised me with a great bow and what a concurrence, it too was a regular long war bow with high lightning dmg, in this case ‘Buzzing’ – 1-260 lightning dmg.
I was very pleased to see, that Frozen River has not been inhabited with gloams in my map seed. I did not do Nihlathak quest, but I have to remind you, that at lvl70 - 73 all skellies at the Pindle’s garden give ¼ to 1/10 worth of full XP bar when killed. In one of these XP runs I found Riphook from Pindle, but its damage is too low compared to Buzzing long war bow. If I will find runes for upgrading in Hell and a shael to socket it, it could be my main bow.
I had to be very careful at the Ancients’ way, since Hell Lords are dreadful war machines and I do not envy any non-melee char without massive defence or good blocking ability.
Ancients themselves were hard and I was prepared to end my journey here, but I got lucky roll on their mods - 2 with teleportation and one with mana burn. Anyway axe thrower was able to kill my decoy in one hit, so I had a great opportunity to die in a half of second if he would shoot from the distance. There are two towers near entrance to the 1st WS level, running behind one of these towers allowed me to shoot the wall with GA in a way in which GA reached Talic after the arrow bounced off the wall. Otherwise all Ancients kept chasing me and totally ignored Valk and mercenary. I forgot to mention, that my idea about IM wand did not work, because it just did not appear at the Malah’s shop (Maybe it just can’t appear?), but I bought level 2 enchant staff instead.
The 1st WS level was not difficult, only champion hierophants healed each other very fast and I had to run past them. The 2nd WS level waypoint was very close to the entrance of the level, so I got a big advantage. After activating the WP, I cautiously kept shooting one screen away in the unexplored areas to check if any monsters are there. This way I detected gloams before they got chance to shoot me unprepared. Since I got only 30 lightning resist, I saved and exited the game till I got 2nd WS level without gloams (or burning souls, if you like). Well, I got nasty monster clean 2nd WS level, but the game was smart enough and put scores of oblivion knights and doom knights in the 3rd WS level. All these drove me and my mercenary and Valk right to the entrance to 2nd level from 3rd level. There were about dozen of doom knights around us and some oblivion knights shooting from the distance. It were my instincts or I am not sure what, but doom knights were half yard away and coming, but I stood still with my finger ready to push button for full rejuvenation pot even when we got cursed. I really trusted my instincts since at the Chaos sanctuary my mercenary got IMed several times, but I always TPed or ran away in time. This was very weird case, but surprisingly my instincts or my gaming experience was right and my mercenary stood right in front of me, my Valk exactly right to me, and there was an entrance behind me and some kind of stand or ornament left to me. Thereby there were dozen of doom knights within one yard radius from me, but they could not reach me. Near to the entrance to the Throne room I found a unique demonhide sash and almost jumped up in my chair. Luck rarely comes alone, so for this case that stupid String was eth.
When I fought my way to the Throne room, game was even smarter (is it really always so smart?) and had put gloams in the Throne room! In HC you have to be prepared for any events, so I had stocked lightning resist ring and boots for such a case. Even then one shot from one gloam took about 70 HP (at 75 lightning resist).
After mercilessly killing all gloams I reached Baal’s minions. The 1st wave was nothing special as always, but 2nd wave shocked me (or I had forgotten what means fast healing unravelers with all those cold mages). So after my merc had been poisoned to death several times and I almost got really upset with the game, Achmel the Cursed aka ‘mighty poisoner’ finally was down.
The 3rd and the 4th wave was not difficult, even Lister with his gang took only 10 minutes when divide and kill method was used. Baal? It was a very long battle, took me about 80 minutes. In the process I had to be careful not to loose concentration all the time, because I was taken down to 30 – 100 HP every few minutes. When shopping at Malah, I was dreaming about the staff with static field charges, but I think that item simply doesn’t exist. At the start the fight was challenging, then I got angry to Baal for duplicating himself every time I came to ‘meet’ him, near the end I was very worried about dying, because the clock struck 0 am and I was getting sleepy. When that behemoth was dead, he left me a unique ring, which more or less woke me up completely. Too bad it was only a bad Manald, but at least it was something interesting after 80 minutes of monotone shoot, dodge attacks, shoot, dodge attacks, get pots from the shop, shoot, dodge attacks…
After Baal was down and NM difficulty was beaten, I decided to do some Moo Moo for relaxation and better items. With Buzzing long war bow (my current bow) cows were too tough and merc died very fast since he has 606 def Mesh armor, Merciless Bed-De-Corbin of Locust and a Rockstopper. So I tried doing cows with Riphook and then cows were much easier indeed. Riphook’s 30% slowing ability really helped there.
Oh, what a fool I have been! I totally forgot that in cases with so high DEX, bows with psychical damage, even very low one, are much better than any high elemental damage bows. That is the toll for not playing 9 months! :lol: Eh, being addicted is not good option either. At least I managed to do Ancients and Baal with that crappy Buzzing long war bow, but if I have remembered this earlier, I did not have to spend 80 long and boring minutes against Baal. Better later than never as the saying says or in this case when I will find upgrading runes and shael (although finding Pul should not be very hard at Hell, it is no fast task). So I did some areas of NM for XP and items; I would like to highlight one jewel that I found at the Ancient’s Way - a perfect ruby of fervor jewel! I was 95% far with the grail when I stopped playing at the last autumn, but this jewel pleased me more than any TC78 or TC81 items, which I have found in large quantities when I was fanatically mfing several or more hours a day last summer.
Further I kept mfing in NM, because I know that Hell will be non-stop ‘Kill or get killed’ action and I had to find good resist charms and equipment. I found several great items and I will list them in the following summary about my Amazon’s equipment, stats and other things at the time I stopped mfing in NM


Summary about my Amazon after completing NM and finishing mfing in it.



Level 74 HC SP

Stats are written including bonuses given from the items and charms.

79 STR (MS damage – 73 to 479)
345 DEX (6620 AR and 604 def)
25 VIT (337 life)
25 Energy (139 mana)

Resists in Hell with my survivability gear on:

75 fire
49 cold
62 lightning
2 poison

Skills with bonuses given from items:

Valkyrie 20 (22)
Penetrate 20 (22)
Critical strike 11
Dodge 8
Evade 4
Avoid 7
Guided arrow 16
Multishot 8

I think that maybe I should increase Avoid, but for now I have to finish maxing GA.

Survivability equipment:

Bow – Skystrike (from unique monster in the Catacombs 3 NM)
Armor – Viper 29 resist all (from unique monster in Act 2 NM)
Headgear – a rare circlet - 1 – 109 lightning damage and minor mods
Gloves - 20 IAS and +3 to bow and xbow skills (bought from Larzuk in NM)
Belt – eth String (from unique monster in 3rd WS level)
Boots – rare greaves - 31 fire and lightning resist, 5 DEX, 12% chance for nova when struck (from NM Andy)
Rings – a rare - 14 lightning, 30 fire, 27 poison resists, 3 to min damage
And a 6% Manald
Amulet – 26 all resists (found somewhere in the Ancient’s way NM)

On the switch I have lvl2 enchant staff.
All above was found with 18 – 60 MF (IMO nice, but I spent about a dozen of hours especially for Mfing in NM after the difficulty was beaten).


Act 1 Hell

Well, my resists are quite good, my Valkyrie too, only merc dies all the time. I have problems with mana leech and since merc dies in a few hits from any monster, playing is impossible. But I myself do not do enough damage either. All dying fears were overrated, but who cares if I can not kill fallen in less than minute? Conclusion is simple – I am still not ready for Hell. Den of evil quest completing time proves it doubtlessly as it took over than 100 minutes (when I realised that hour has passed half of the den was cleaned and I was not going to give up). I have to admit that some items of my gear are not suitable for Hell either. Now I will go back to NM and even Normal for better boots, headgear and ring. I think that in cases like this, when char is not capable of doing enough damage, but Mfing is a very time consuming option, we have to rely on crushing blow or static field. So I plan to mf Normal Meph for Goblin toe to get CB and also craft Blood gloves for CB purpose.

Again apologies for grammar mistakes.

Best regards,
Dusters

[Dad Daniel]

Entertaining post!
I wish you health and long life in the Hell journeys!
Besides you allready are blessed by the "LOD GOD" - finding PERFECT ruby jewel of fervor means 40ed/15ias jewel?!?!!!
Man, you have THE JEWEL itself!

[HCTwinJava]

Otherwise all Ancients kept chasing me and totally ignored Valk and mercenary.

your were too close to them, and you didn't run away fast enough. ~50% or more FRW would allow you to get rid of them on your tail - possibly except the leaper, but the leaper can be pretty safely killed by just running a bit ahead of his landing spot.

Also, your merc may die but your valk should be strong enough to survive all 3's joint attack for very long.

NM ancients are not hard, except when they explode. my ladder strafers could tank everything they ran into in NM, NM Diablo/Baal/ancients included, and never really lost much life (would lose 200-300 when FE ancients exploded nearby).

I forgot to mention, that my idea about IM wand did not work

IM works against player barbs, not against Blizzard's barbs. (Even a necro would typically never use IM against them.)

Baal? It was a very long battle, took me about 80 minutes.

At least I managed to do Ancients and Baal with that crappy Buzzing long war bow, but if I have remembered this earlier, I did not have to spend 80 long and boring minutes against Baal.

taking some time is normal. but over 30 min was too long. Riphook is not a nice bow against NM baal. your lvl 20+ valk should be strong enough to survive both baal's joint attacks - this can be explored to your advantage.

Level 74 HC SP


79 STR (MS damage – 73 to 479)
345 DEX (6620 AR and 604 def)
25 VIT (337 life)
25 Energy (139 mana)

337 life is way too low for Hell. Surely, most bowazons don't lose life very much most of the time. But durable bowazons are those who don't die under 1 hit.

level 74 untwinked is a bit too low for hell. A more comfortable lvl would 78-80. It's not just about you, it's mainly for your merc. If you don't reach 80, your merc can never reach 80. And a lvl 80 act2 merc is notably stronger than himself at 70.

base vita does not mean LOW LOW life: you could get 600-800 hit points with base vita at ~75, so long as you try to.

Resists in Hell with my survivability gear on:

75 fire
49 cold
62 lightning
2 poison

Skills with bonuses given from items:

Valkyrie 20 (22)
Penetrate 20 (22)
Critical strike 11
Dodge 8
Evade 4
Avoid 7
Guided arrow 16
Multishot 8

Bow – Skystrike (from unique monster in the Catacombs 3 NM)

resist are okay, except LR is a bit too low.
why not a single pt in FA???
also, why not a few pt in strafe? Compared to FA, strafe is less relevant, however. a special benefit: Strafe will allow you to "see" what you don't/can't see.
Skystrike is a Norm/NM bow.

I think that in cases like this, when char is not capable of doing enough damage, but Mfing is a very time consuming option, we have to rely on crushing blow or static field. So I plan to mf Normal Meph for Goblin toe to get CB and also craft Blood gloves for CB purpose.

CB is good for your merc, not for you. You need speed: both r/w and attack speed.



Anyway, nice job!