PVP Zon Help :: On the cheap?

[MalVeauX]

Heya gents,

Well, I've decided to look more towards the humble side of PVP with the amazon. Meaning, not requireing the best of the best of everything in order to work beyond marginal. So I'm looking at Exceptional items which can be upgraded for cheap and some great runewords that don't require duped high runes. Anyhow, I'm thinking of making a rather flexible character, instead of a one sided crutch type character.

So here's the ideas so far:

Standard Guided Arrrow with a Bow

Honestly, this is older than old. But it still works. I've found that really high damage is great of course, but it's not what makes it work. I find speed works better than high damage. I'd rather hit 6 times instead of 4 times for example, and roll that critical strike and average damage roll more times to achieve a higher damage output. That means, I don't need the highest end bows out there. But instead, good average damage bows with the best speeds. I'm excluduing Faith due to expense. The idea is to take more average wealth players and give them something to work with instead of an automatic turn off.

Poison Skills

Poison is simply great in PVP. Without any special gear, we can get pretty good poison rates from only two skills. We can cloud up the screen and once our target has caught the plauge, we can run away while they drain. Once they're low, we can attack with more advantage on our hands. Draining health with poison removes the need to stand still long enough to actually attack, so it allows us to survive more often, even with mediocre gear going on.

All the Rest

Dodges are of course, free! Who needs expensive shields, defense, etc when you have free 50% chances to ignore most things. That's great! Of course, it requires a lot of skill points too. We also have wonderful things like Decoy, which is cheap and useful for chargers and guided arrows that are chasing your behind. We also have wonderful things like Critical strike to up the damage, without requiring great gear to "double" our damage up.

--- So I need help to combine these aspects into a workable and not too pricey character. Meaning, I don't want to rely upon expensive skill charms, or over-priced and duped runewords that are only available to those who have played a long time, or have friends who helped them, etc. I'm looking more towards people who play off and on, but would like to have a chance in public games or private games and not simply walk in and get flattened every single time. Maybe only 1/4th of the time would be a good bet

I'd like to combine Guided Arrow + Multi-shot + Plague Javalin.

Now, skill wise and character wise, this is easily possible. We have plenty of skills for this. The problem starts for Gear. So what gear do we have available that would be fitting?

Bows

Up'd SkyStrike? Common, fast, +skills, great damage for very cheap.
Up'd RipHook? Common, very fast, open wounds, slows target, etc. BM?
Up'd WitchWild? Cheap, can be fast, deadly strike, resists.
Up'd GoldStrike? Fast, awesome damage, relatively cheap.

Harmony Bow? Cheap to make, great damage, but kind of slow.
Cruel Elites? Cruel Hydra with 2 sockets (Shael/Shael)? Ward? Blade?

Note: All of this stuff goes for Perfect Gems fairly quickly.

Javalins

Lancers Javalins? Shop them in hell, +3 skills, not much more needed.
Titans Revenge. Relatively cheap. Obviously great too. Pgems can buy it.

Shield

Ryhme Heater? Awesome blocking, can't be frozen, light, resis, cheap!
Storm Shield. Obviously desirable, but not the cheapest. A pul can buy one.
Spirit Monarch. Again, relatively cheap, do-it-yourself for your plague.

Jewelry

Whatever you have. The obvious uniques are great; rares can be better; crafts can be insane. Whatever works for your budget.

Helm

Magical Circlet? Lancers with 2nd Mod; Socketed. Cheap to gamble.
Rare Circlet? +2 all skills, resists, life, mana, etc. Great to gamble.
Shako. Obviously great, but not cheap.
Dream. This helm is great for bows; if you can afford it.
Tiara with 3xSockets with 45% IAS. Sometimes faster and cheaper.

Armor

Lion Heart? So cheap to make, so good too. Can't deny the mods.
Duress? Again, cheaper to make than some of the bigger words.
Treachery? Great armor for prebuff, or simply great for the IAS
ViperMagi? Relatively common. Great mods overall.
SpiritShroud? Can't be frozen and skills. Kind of not good otherwise.
Durie's Shell? Awesome armor; cheaper than dirt. Pgems buys it.
Jewelers Armor with 60% IAS. Fast is good. May be easier to make.

Note: Most goes for pgems again, forge drops can give you all you need most of the time and NM forge is not that difficult to take a few characters towards.

Gloves & Boots

Crafted Hit Power. Best possibly. But can take heavy investments.
Gambled Rares. Cheap and easy. Gold comes fast anyways.
Uniques. Of course lots of these apply.

Anything works here really, so long as you have it. Speed and skills are desirable. Everything else is just a bonus if you can get it.

Charms

I find that by towards the end of a few characters, we mass up charms that we never bothered to think about, and either sold them, or muled them, etc. If you have any smalls and large charms with +max damage or life mods, why not use them right? Also, I found small mana charms to be quite a great boost in keeping you going when you blow off a lot of mana while throwing out your skills. More life is always good too. And of course, big res charms are useful and relatively easy and cheap to hold on to. Just doing cow runs or Nightmare Act3 Flayer Jungle will stack them up relatively quickly.

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So now... how do I build this character?

Should I pre-buff stats to wear gear? - Meaning, should I use a 30 strength circlet, 30 strength breast plate, etc anything that buffs strength in order to put on a Lion Heart or something that also buffs my strength and keeps it on, and then buff up to Storm Shield and let it hold it's own with the 30 bonus there too? I can see the strength buff going pretty high, but honestly, is it all worth while?

Will I do enough damage? - Combining the poison draining of someone's life, will an up'd Exec bow or Cruel Elite really do the damage we need to do to finish someone off so long as it fires really fast?

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Examples:

Would this work you think?

Helm - 45% IAS Tiara
Armor - 60% IAS Jewelers of Whale/Squid
Bow - Up'd RipHook/SkyStrike/Cruel Hydra/Harmony Matriarch?
Switch - Titans/StormShield (or Ryhme Heater)
Jewelry - Cats Eye, Raven, Soj (obvious), rares, crafts, etc.
Gloves - HitPower 20% IAS crafted, with life / Uniques.
Boots - WarTrav, Crafted Boots, Incredi-Rares.
Belt - Crafted, great Rare, etc.

Basically which bow would be the fastest and output the most damage in the end? I really like the idea of using SkyStrike uped, or Riphook uped. Both would have low end damage, but decent average damage due to speed. Plus they have desirable other mods on the bows. But would the Riphook be seen as seriouly bad manners in a pub room? I think so.

Would a Cruel Hydra with 2x Shaels and 125% off bow IAS be fast enough or is the bow just too slow to begin with? Should I look for a Ward or Blade bow instead?

Example II.

Would this work?

Helm - Dream
Armor - 60% IAS armor.
Bow - Up'ed SkyStrike/RipHook/Cruel Elite - Shael'd of course.
Switch - Titans/Shield of course
Jewely - Cat's Eye, Rares, Crafts, etc.
Gloves - 20% IAS Hitpowers again.
Boots - Great rares.
Belts - Great rares/crafts.

The idea being, would it shoot fast enough to deliver the 800+ lighting damage per hit from the dream/skystrike combination? Plus the phsyical damage (minimal of course). But the raw speed. Would it deliver the death blow to someone after the plague sucks them dry?

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Thanks for the time!

I'm just trying to find ways to have fun with items that normally get sold or left on the ground. I know there are way better options and that this is probably not going anywhere at all, but I'd still like to give it a try. I really like the low damage exceptional bows, but I want to combine speed with poison to maybe get something that is half decent at public PVP games.

Please don't respond with "Get Faith, pwn" or "Read this Guide" type responses. They're not helpful and not even remotely on topic. Please, if you bother to respond, just answer questions that I posed and make suggestions? I'm looking for people with experience too.

Cheers!

[Wmeredith]

Disclaimer: I did not read more than a third of your post.

There's really no way to make a PvP zon that isn't crazy-expensive. They're probably the most expensive class to play PvM or PvP. They're totally gear dependent.

Just my $0.02. I don't know who your PvP'ing against, but in ANY pubby you'll get destroyed unless you have top gear. This is especially true for 'zons.

[CoRRuPt-OnE]

Same as Wmeredith, didn't really read your post but a PvP Zon is a VERY item and charm dependant character. Its not like a hammerdin where you just need as much + skills and you can get and sit there. You need the whole shabangabang with this one.

[MalVeauX]

Hrm,

I understand where you're coming from with it.

I've found that the PVP zon can however come out on top in the middle weights. Not in the 80+ tier fights, but the mid-levels, like 40's. I've been doing PVP with zons in that range and they can be quite brutal with a bow against others. I find there's a breaking point where the other characters finally get uber gear, but the non-uber zon stuff is already damned good for the mid levels. We just don't achieve the "thousanders of thousands" type damages that other characters get at their highest level with their best gear.

Anyhow, something I'm thinking about now:

Open Wounds + Poison.

At higher levels, Open Wounds do nasty enough damage to drain someone while running very quickly to stay away? Add to that a hint of points for more drain effect (though easier to resist).

I was looking at RipHook combined with Duress. It's a lot of open wound chance together. Only a few hits would start the bleeding pretty much. Perhaps combined with a pre-buff from Treachery for some poison splash. Would it work for the level's 60~70 area?

Cheers!

[the boss]

IMO Open wounds works well only level 90+, or else its just killing way too slow with stacking poison resists...sandtrek, atma's, or carrion wind..

[MalVeauX]

IMO Open wounds works well only level 90+, or else its just killing way too slow with stacking poison resists...sandtrek, atma's, or carrion wind..

Hrm... I tried it out today with my level 43 Zon against lvl 50's~70's paladins and barbs. Seemed to work well enough. Definitely doesn't work on uber-geared characters, but against the average PvPer at mid-level, it was effective (though most zons can be effective at mid levels with a decent bow).

Though the poison may have played a much larger role combined with speed & knockback. Man those desynches were getting terrible.

Cheers!