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Stats and skills

Stats

Warning: while this section about Stats allocation covers most current bowazon builds, it does not apply to the Mageazon subclass, which will be discussed later. It does not apply to HC gaming either, for what it's worth. :)

Strength (Str)

For a bowazon, Strength has one use and only one: to wear equipment. Strength doesn't improve bow damage, nor does it improve any secondary stat. Each point of Strength past the amount needed to carry your equipment is wasted damage.

Unless you have spotted a very specific unique/set non-bow equipment in mind, you should always try to invest just enough in Strength to carry your bow. If you have planned your equipment already and some pieces of your end-game gear have bonuses to Strength, you can plan the minimal Strength according to those bonuses. Wearing Str equipment just because it has a Str bonus isn't good, though: you could invest a few points into Str and use better equipment instead (why not with a Dexterity bonus?).

There is not much more to be known about Strength. The equipment section will list the required Str scores for many types of weapons.

Dexterity (Dex), Attack Rating (AR) and Defense Rating (DR)

"The average bowazon thinks about Dex eight times per second"
- old Amazon Basin saying

And this is true. Adding Dexterity increases the bowazon damage in two ways: by providing a damage increase (critters drop faster), and an Attack Rating (AR) increase (critters drop more often).

The link between damage and Dex is simple: every point in Dexterity adds one percent to damage. Hence, a bowazon with 300 Dex and a 50-100 bow would have listed damage of 200-400. It is easy to see why Dex is important, especially considering many LoD bows exceed the mark of 200 maximum damage. Things get more complicated when you take physical resistance, critical strike, Amplify Damage and elemental damage into account, but you get the basics.

The link between Dex and AR is simple too: each point into Dex adds 4 points to AR (and this can be further enhanced by the Penetrate skill). The actual chance to hit a target is not only dependant on AR, though: it also takes into account the level difference between the character and the monster. So if you don't hit enough, it is perhaps because the monsters have a much higher level than you. Many amazon skills never do an AR check, and hit monsters 95% of the time (the maximum possible). Generally speaking, bowazons have more than enough AR to hit monsters of their level.

Dex has a third bonus: every 4 points to Dex add 1 point to Defense Rating (DR). Big whoopidoo. First, Defense Rating is useless to a good bowazon: if the monster gets close enough to hit you, then it was your fault in the first place (remember the Tao). Second, with some armors (even light ones) ranging in the 800+ DR, the mere 100 additional DR a 400 Dex score would give is completely insignificant.

Suggested amount of Dex: the sky is the limit. Seriously. Unless you are playing a variant build, and after you build a sufficient amount of life as a safety buffer against lag (more on this coming), all points should be distributed to Dex.

Vitality (Vit), Life, and Stamina

Vitality is of medium importance to the bowazon: while most other classes end the game pumping Vitality, a bowazon, thanks to the already discussed predominance or range fight and the availability of life leech, doesn't need a lot of life to be successful.

Each point added to Vitality brings 3 Life points and 3 Stamina points. As amazons start with 50 Life, get over the course of the game 60 extra Life (from doing the Golden Bird quest in all 3 difficulties), and gain two extra Life points per level, the life total of an amazon at the end of the game is:

What I like to have is what I call a safety buffer against lag. Lag is about the only monster in the game that can kill a well-trained and well-equipped bowazon (that and a crowded town portal or waypoint, that is). Sometimes, the slightest latency can make you bite the dust before you can leech enough life to recover from the previous blow. I would suggest an end-game life total ranging from 450 to 600, depending on your connection speed. What does matter is not Vitality, but Life total. You can reach this total with anything from base Vitality to 60+ Vit (I generally stop at 50), depending on your equipment. A pure glass-cannon bowazon has end-game life under 350, and it is very difficult to level such characters efficiently (as you lose 10% of the required experience for reaching the next level when you die, 5% if you recover your corpse, and this can be hours of leveling lost at the higher levels for a single wrong step or lag spike).

Of course, it is possible to have a very successful tank bowazon with 1000+ Life, Damage Reduction and maxed resists, but I think it is a waste, considering how opposed to the Tao it is. YMMV, of course, and those builds are often very fun.

I would generally suggest leveling a bowazon by pumping Str and Dex enough to wear end-game equipment (when death doesn't cost much experience-wise), then pump Vit to reach the required end-game Life total if needed, then end with pumping Dex. Again, YMMV.

Stamina is nice to have, but nothing to write home about: many unique and set boots, as well as rare boots have either large bonuses to stamina, slower stamina drain or faster stamina regeneration. At the end of the game, all amazons can run for a long time before resting.

Energy and Mana

Don't invest in it. Energy is considered a waste for bowazons, and this for a variety of excellent reasons.

First, the rate. Energy only brings mana points, and at a lousy rate: 1.5 mana points per Energy point invested. For comparison's sake, Vitality gives 3 Life points per point invested. If you need more mana (and there are several bowazon builds that do), items are the way to go, not energy. A good small charm could give you up to 17 points of mana, which is roughly 11 points in Energy for just one little inventory square. I'm not even looking at a +90 to mana amulet or ring.

Second, the need (or rather the lack of): while some bowazon skills require ample mana to be used effectively (Immolation and Freezing Arrow mostly), the bowazon is at heart a physical damage dealer. With the amount of damage a bowazon can deal in the blink of an eye, the smallest amount of mana leech can refill the mana globe at an incredible rate.

Like for the life total, a safety buffer against lag is good to have mana-wise. But it is much lower: for a standard (physical-damage mostly) bowazon: a mana total from 200 to 250 is more than she needs already, and can come from just a few items.

Skills

Introduction

By design, a bowazon only uses two of the three skills tree available: Bows and Crossbows skills, and Passive and Magic skills. Javelin and Spear skills will not be discussed here, although a small section will be included about hybrid builds in the Templates section of this guide.

All the evaluation of skills when compared one to another will be made with Hell difficulty in mind. All skills (or no skill at all) can be used to make it to the end of Normal Difficulty. Most skills have enough potential for talented players to finish Nightmare with. Sadly, many skills just don't cut it in Hell difficulty, except for the best players.

Some (many) of the skills are referred to as "Placeholders" or "variant material". This is in regard to Hell difficulty. Most of those skills have their use when they become available, and a single point investment in those can give you some benefit until you gain access to something more useful. Good examples are Exploding Arrow and Ice Arrow, and Inner Sight is very useful for low-level HC amazons, who want to invest a bit in life from the scratch. Generally, a couple of points in Multishot, as well as in Critical Strike should be enough to carry you to the higher level skills, though.

Diminishing and Increasing returns: for some skills, large investments typically don't bring much: critical strike is such a skill (past a certain point, additional points only give a few percents more). Those skills will be called "Diminishing returns skills". For other skills (many elemental damage skills are in this category), additional points past certain skill levels (8 and 16) give a better bonus to reward players for their investment. Those skills will be called "Increasing returns skills". Generally speaking, it is a good idea to check for the "sweet spot" in Diminishing returns skills (the point after which further points seem to become wasted), while Increasing returns skills should probably be maxed if you plan to use them in the long term. In the header for each skill section, DR or IR will be listed, for Diminishing Returns and Increasing Returns.

Bow and Crossbow tree

The bow tree can be divided into 3 parts: Cold Skills (left), Fire Skills (right), and Physical Skills (middle).

The Cold branch

The Cold branch is composed of 3 skills, the first two of them having slightly overlapping effects, while the third one is very separate. All Cold skills have 95% chance to hit.

What makes the Cold branch so efficient for a bowazon is the rather specific way cold duration is computed in the game: cold duration does not only take the skill duration into account but also your additional equipment, thus making cold skills the ultimate crowd control skills for a bowazon. Cold duration is halved in Nightmare difficulty, then halved again in Hell difficulty.

Cold skills are the perfect embodiment of the second part of the Tao, before they come to her. If the enemies are frozen, then they can't reach the bowazon.

Cold Arrow (Clvl 6, IR)

Cold Arrow is a placeholder skill, as all of its effects are amplified in its cousin down the line, Ice Arrow. Definitely a one point skill, unless you are making a variant.

Cold Arrow slows monsters down for a good duration, and adds a ridiculous amount of cold damage to your attack (this ridiculous amount is of course good to have when Cold Arrow becomes available at Character Level (Clvl) 6).

Ice Arrow (Clvl 18, IR)

A much better skill than Cold Arrow, Ice Arrow freezes rather than just chills, although for a much lower duration. The cold damage amount is also nothing to scoff at, and the skill has some potential as a secondary damage dealer. Back in Classic Diablo 2 (CD2), Ice Arrow was often used as a left-click attack for its freezing effect.

Freezing Arrow ( Clvl 30, IR)

Now, we are talking. The queen of Cold skills, and one of the best skills in the game, Freezing Arrow has encountered many nerfs and bumps over the various patches. Freezing Arrow (FA) not only adds a huge amount of cold damage (more than 300 at level 20, even more so with skill adders), it also has a huge blast radius (3.3 Yards). All monsters in this radius are frozen solid for a duration of 2 seconds not taking into account potential cold duration items. Between this radius and a potentially huge duration (the best duration I'm aware of is 22 seconds solid in Hell, meaning 88 seconds in Normal difficulty), Freezing Arrow is probably one of the 3 best crowd control skills in the game (with Shockwave and Warcry). But crowd control is not the only strength of FA. FA applications can be roughly divided into 4 groups:

1. "Panic Button": this one is the easiest to use, and the most reactive one: you see a group of monsters kill or go past your defensive line, you switch to FA, freeze them, and move away. Even without lots of additional Cold duration, FA is very efficient for this, and has saved tons of bowazons over the years. One point is enough for this, as neither Cold duration nor Blast radius improve with Slvl.

2. Planned Crowd Control: not strictly the same as the "Panic Button", because tactical use of FA is generally planned. You can use FA to reposition yourself to get a better Pierce angle, or to carefully stop some of the most dangerous monster packs in their tracks (like those Frenzy Minotaurs in Act5, or Lister's pack). If you have a low level FA, you can even use FA for scouting. FA is also obviously very useful in party playing (more on this later).

3. Triggered effects: LoD introduced a brand new type of magical effects, the "%-chance to cast" effects. When you hit, attack or get hit (only the 2 first type interest us here), a special spell has a certain chance to be cast. For example, the GoldStrike Arch unique Gothic Bow has 5% to cast Slvl 5 to7 Fist of Heavens on attack. While at first those effects look anecdotic at best (because the chance is so low), any player will soon notice that FA triggers them in a very reliable way against crowded monsters. This is because each target in the (large) Blast radius can potentially make the spell trigger. True, while Fist of Heavens looks great, it is nothing to write home about. The picture starts changing when we are talking about Amplify Damage or Lower Resist curses... The ability to trigger powerful and supposedly very random effects in a reliable way is one of the reasons FA is so popular nowadays. As for the "Panic Button", only one point in FA is required for Triggered effects to reach full speed.

4. Damage dealer: yes, FA can be used as a very, very effective damage dealer. First, the cold damage at high skill levels (20+) is good (410-420 damage at Slvl 25, for example, which is very easy to reach). But its incredible power is revealed by the FA + Pierce combination (this skill combination is also one of the reasons Triggered effects work so well with FA). If your FA pierces and hits another enemy in the immediate range of the first one, FA will trigger again, and all enemies under the overlapping Blast radiuses will receive the cold damage twice. Of course, twice is actually quite low in regard to the potential for multiple pierces against crowded enemies. 4 to 5 successive pierces are not uncommon in very crowded situations (like the Cow Level), meaning FA can actually top the damage of the best physical skills with any bow. If you consider that 100% Pierce is not hard to achieve nowadays (*cough* Buriza *cough*), we are looking at one of the most impressive crowd damage-dealing skills of the game. Except for one big drawback: at high levels, FA's mana cost is huge. Very high level FA can only be sustained in a consistent way by a high physical damage bow and a huge amount of mana leech (we are talking 25% and more). As of now, it seems cold damage from items is not added to FA's blast damage, but tester's experiences differ on this.

The Physical branch

The physical branch is one of the reasons bowazons are so popular (and also unfortunately so whined about) in D2 world. Sadly, two of the four skills are probably why people start bowazons, while a good bowazon should reflect the subtle interaction between physical, elemental and passive skills.

Magic Arrow (Clvl 1)

Blech. This skill has no use except as a placeholder. Arrows are so easy to come by that one of its properties doesn't help at all, and the damage bonus is so pitiful that it could as well not be there. Oh, and this skill requires an AR check. Next one?

Multishot (Clvl 6)

This is the most abused and badly used amazon skill. Despite a flat 25% damage reduction and the inability to affect the same target with more than one arrow, Multishot (MS) has by far the best damage over time potential for a bowazon equipped with a high-end weapon.

Without taking more time than a single attack, MS spreads a volley of arrows (one additional arrow per skill point). In theory, we are looking at up to 15 times (or more with skill adders, not even taking Pierce into account) the normal damage dealt. In practice, things are different, since it's extremely unusual for all arrows in a MS volley to hit something (except walls, which can't crumble in D2). Thus, clever amazon players prefer to limit their investment in MS to a good number (6, 10, or a bit more), and rather learn how to aim in order to maximise both the number of arrows hitting, and the impact of Pierce. But clever amazons are sadly a rare breed.

Besides being an excellent damage-dealer, MS has also some potential for triggering effects, has incredible potential for applying crowd control modifiers (cold damage, knockback...), and is an excellent scouting skill in open areas when you have some life and/or mana leech: fire a volley of MS in a direction, and watch your character: if the leech swirls around her head show up, then there are monsters in this direction. This tactic is especially useful in the River of Flames.

MS is best used against large groups of monsters coming from the same direction, while FA is more useful for crowds and Strafe is usually the best skill for scattered monsters.

Guided Arrow (Clvl 18)

Another very criticized skill, Guided Arrow (GA) doesn't look that great at first. It follows an enemy or acquires a target of its own, has a little damage bonus, a low mana cost, and auto-hits. Nothing bad, but nothing excellent.

What makes GA an extremely good and often abused skill is that, since version 1.09, it pierces and can hit the same target several times, thus multiplying the damage output. Ouch. While this is especially bad in PvP, GA also became one of the best skills to use against a single monster (like a boss). With its very low mana cost at high levels, it can also be used to quickly carry tons of elemental damage on Physical Immune (PI) monsters. While Piercing GA is capped at 4 successive Pierces (even with 100% Pierce) of the same target, we are still looking at 5 times the usual damage, without an AR check, and with a damage bonus. Ouch again. The unique Ballista (Buriza do Kyanon) with its 100% Pierce and huge cold damage is probably one of the reasons for the current uproar against GA.

Except for the cheesy Piercing, GA still has many interesting tactical uses: it is a great scouting skill especially in closed environments (tombs come to mind), allowing a clever bowazon to shoot from behind a door or from a corner at dangerous bosses... And it even has some ultra-cheesy applications against three dangerous act bosses, the three Prime Evils no less: Mephisto, Diablo and Baal (more on this in the Walkthrough section).

Strafe (Clvl 24)

The queen is no more... Once the leveling skill of all bowazons, Strafe fell from grace in 1.04, where MS took the crown of damage over time, and has been tremendously nerfed in LoD.

Strafe still has its uses, though. First, it is elegant. ;) Seeing a bowazon fire the exact number of arrows, all in the required direction, in a neat sequential way as opposed to a bestial, brutish MS volley is something I will never be tired of.

Strafe adds a little bonus to damage, makes separate AR checks for each target, and gains one extra target per skill point, stopping at level 6 for 10 targets. The mana cost is constant, 11 mana (the equivalent of a level 8 Multishot, which only fires 9 arrows).

This "target" definition needs to be looked at, by the way. Strafe fires an extra arrow at every living object in the vicinity, including friendly players, summons, mercenaries... But those arrows are only directed at the enemy target. Thus, party playing (or the simple use of Valkyrie, mercenary and Decoy) can lead to impressive streams of arrows at a single target (an unlucky boss, perhaps). Testing seems to indicate that AR check for additional arrows on a single target is capped at 50% chance to hit, which would explain the inconsistencies noticed.

While most players using it stop at 6 points, a maxed Strafe features a decent amount of additional damage, and cannot be considered a waste of skill points.

A Strafe cycle is composed of a first arrow fired at the normal attack speed, then successive arrows fired at a much faster rate (see the section on IAS for more information).

Strafe is best used in corridors, or against scattered targets.

The main weakness of Strafe is known as Strafe-lock, and happens when you fire your Strafe cycle without cover near the enemy. Until you have been hit (which can mean instant death for a glass-cannon bowazon) or your cycle is over, you can not move and as such are very vulnerable to attacks. Careful planning (something most amazons seem to lack nowadays) can render the probability of Strafe-lock void, though.

The Fire branch

Probably the weakest part of the bow tree, the Fire branch is made of 3 skills. One of them shines because of a bug, one of them is pure variant material, and the last one was nerfed into oblivion because of Blizzard's inability to code a graphical engine. :(

All Fire skills hit 95% of the time.

Fire Arrow (Clvl 1)

Bug or feature? When you look at Fire Arrow's description, it looks as yet another placeholder skill: weak fire damage, low mana cost and no other characteristic. But 1.09 brought a "feature" (bug?) that made this skill the best physical-immune killer for a bowazon, and at Slvl1 no less: Fire Arrow converts all physical damage a bowazon can deal to fire damage. Which means a bowazon using it has exactly the same killing power against Physical Immune non-Fire Immune monsters. Weird, I know.

Correction: it seems Fire Arrow "only" converts 50% of Physical Damage to Fire Damage. This still makes it a very powerful tool.

The 1.10 patch may very well remove this "feature", so while it is a great tool currently, it could not last. ;)

Exploding Arrow (Clvl 12)

Variant material: the fire damage is pathetic even at high levels, and the Blast radius isn't great either. Besides, Immolation Arrow further down the Fire branch is much better at all levels than Exploding Arrow.

Immolation Arrow (Clvl 24, IR)

Why did they do this? Back in CD2, Immolation Arrow (Immo) was an excellent skill, with lots of tactical use. It was also the best boss killing skill a bowazon could use, with the possibility to stack multiple Immos in order to create patches of fire where monsters would burn very quickly (back then, a high level Immo could last for 20 seconds or more). In order to ease the graphical load on low-end computers, Blizzard nerfed Immo in two ways: it now has a one second timer (thus making spamming Immo impossible), and the flame duration was shot down, being cut to 3 seconds. In exchange, Immo can now leech mana and life (making it a self-sufficient skill), and has improved Fire Damage. This is not sufficient by far.

Immo still has its use, though. Being on an increasing returns mechanism, and with the very high Skill levels attainable in LoD, it can still deal a good amount of fire damage. But what makes it really look bad is the Fire Arrow bug, that can deal tremendous amounts of fire damage for a very low mana cost.

In order to use Immo efficiently, having a high level Valkyrie or a friendly player tanking is important, in order to have monsters stay in the fire patch as long as possible. If you want to use Immolation to its full potential, you have to think like a sorceress would do, and be prepared to max the skill, as well as acquire a large number of extra bow skills items. A level 30+ Immolation still packs a lot of punch.

Passive and magic skills

While most players concentrate on the effects of bow and crossbow skills, the true power of the bowazon lies in her passive and magic skills, as they interact in a very subtle way to give her her extraordinary advantages: if a bowazon needs to invest so little in Vitality and can concentrate on Dex instead, for example, it is mainly because of the Passive skills (although the nature of ranged combat and the existence of leech helps too).

We can divide the Passive and Magic tree into three branches: Magic skills and summons (left), Defensive passives (middle), and Offensive passives (right). As their name implies, passive skills don't require hotkeys, and are always in use.

Magic Skills

Inner Sight (Clvl 1)

While somewhat useful at low levels, the fact that Inner Sight reduces target defense by a fixed amount makes it useless very quickly. Inner Sight is definitely a placeholder skill, which is somewhat sad I suppose.

Slow Missiles (Clvl 1)

Probably one of the best and most underrated skills of the amazon (with Decoy), Slow Missiles (SM) reduces the travelling speed of all incoming missiles to a third. Depending on lag, this may not always be that useful, as dodging even slowed missiles may still be a problem if your connection is not good. A very important use of Slow Missiles is against Lightning Enchanted Boss monsters and Inferno-throwing monsters (like those pesky shamans): those kind of missiles do not travel for a distance, but rather for a duration before disappearing, and as such Slow Missile helps reducing their range. Multi Shot LEBs are problematic, because there is a bug that makes additional lightning bolts emitted by a MSLEB still travel at the same speed and distance but renders them invisible (while not thoroughly tested, this particular behavior is the only explanation for a variety of deaths).

As of 1.08, Slow Missiles seems to act somewhat strangely, especially as far as casting area is concerned (it seems the casting area is centered on your amazon, not on the mouse pointer), so you should practice your SM skill against low threat ranged attackers, like those skeletons in Act 2 Sewers in Normal difficulty. Better safe than sorry!

Decoy (Clvl 24)

An incredibly powerful skill, Decoy has an infinity of amazing tactical uses for a thinking bowazon. Most players believe getting access to Valkyrie renders Decoy obsolete, nothing could be further from the truth. Decoy has one main advantage over the Valkyrie: it doesn't move. All interesting applications of the Decoy come from this fact. Here are a few possibilities to use the Decoy, but any player can find new uses for it with experience.

• Against ranged attackers: while a good Valkyrie is probably more useful against melee attackers than a Decoy, the pattern quickly changes when facing ranged attackers, as the Valk will probably move toward them, letting some of them bring their attention back to you. As a Decoy doesn't move, while it is alive you don't need to worry about being under fire. This tactic is also very useful against the dreaded Lightning Enchanted Bosses (LEBs), because you can cast your Decoy with precision between the sparks and yourself.

• Breaking a crowd: a tactic developed by AK404, the breaking of crowds through the use of both Decoy and Valkyrie makes wonders: summoning both at a certain distance from yourself, and at a distance one from the other, you can quickly break large crowds into more manageable clusters, easy preys for several of your skills. While a Valkyrie is a powerful tank (especially in MP games where her Hit Points scale with the number of players), she can't tank indefinitely against a large crowd. A Decoy will perhaps only last a couple of seconds, but will definitely draw attention away from both the Valk and yourself.

• Scouting: perhaps the best Decoy trick in the book. There are some enemies in the game a standard bowazon should avoid at all cost. The Stygian Dolls in the Durance of Hate, and the Suicide Minions in Act5 are prime example of those, as their dangerous death explosion can kill most bowazons in one unavoidable hit. In open spaces, those are generally not a big deal, as the bowazon can snipe them from a distance. In the mazes of Durance of Hate or WorldStone Keep, this is another story, however, as you risk running into them at any corner. Thus, a Decoy cast from a safe distance just at the corner will lure them out, allowing for remote elimination.

• Building chokepoints: another neat Decoy trick. In some areas (Act 2 Tombs or Arcane Sanctuary come to mind, but Act 3 bridges in the jungle are also a good example), there are narrow corridors that can be blocked with a Decoy, thus building an artificial accumulation point for monsters. This is a dream for Area of Effect attacks, such as Freezing Arrow or Immolation.

• Portable wall: LoD gave us Knockback on bows. One of the problems encountered with Knockback weapons in open spaces is the lack of wall on which to pin the target (this is especially true for single enduring targets such as bosses). In those cases, summon a Decoy just behind the monster: the Decoy will act as a mini-wall on which the monster will be knocked back. Your tanking companions will thank you for this one.

Those are just a few examples of the many uses of Decoy. Keep in mind that as the Decoy has exactly the same hit points as your amazon, it is in no way a tank. Use your Valkyrie or Merc for this role.

Valkyrie (Valk)

DiabloII's dumb blonde. Since version 1.0, the Valkyrie's Artificial Intelligence seems to be downgraded with each patch. She is still a formidable skill, although the way to use it properly changed a lot over time due to this clumsiness unheard of even on Iron Golem made out of a cracked buckler.

Like many other minions, the Valkyrie has the advantage to see her life points scale with the number of players in the game. This makes even a low-level Valkyrie a formidable tank in large games, able to stand incredible amount of damage without problems (except against act bosses, who get a large damage bonus against minions).

What you should not expect from your Valkyrie:

• Kill anything by herself
• Take intelligent decisions on where and when to move
• Scout the surroundings
• Generally be where you need her

What you can expect from your Valkyrie

• Take lots of heat from you
• Sustain large amounts of punishment without dying
• Stand her ground until she disappears

When you look at those little lists, the best tactical trick for the Valk should come to your mind quickly: Combat Drop. This tactic was first proposed by AK404, and is realized by summoning your Valkyrie in the middle of the fight like you would drop a Decoy. Before this tactic was designed, people used to summon their high level Valkyrie, and wait for her to engage the incoming mobs. Of course, this tactic changed the amount of investment advised into the Valkyrie: while she was once a "must-max" skill, she suddenly found much more profitable uses at a lower level of 5 to 10, in order to keep her mana cost low enough for effective Combat Drop. Very high level Valkyries (Slvl 20+) are still useful, especially against very hard-hitting bosses (Fanaticism / Curse / Extra Strong Frenzy Minotaurs come to mind). Having a good Valk also tremendously increases the MTBD (Mean Time Between Deaths) of your mercenary, thus saving you a lot of money.

The best thing a bowazon can do defense-wise is probably to summon a Valk into an incoming group of enemies, then summon a Decoy a bit in front of herself. This way, if the Valk dies, the Decoy can hold a few precious seconds in which the bowazon will summon a new Valk, fall back a few paces, and summon another Decoy. Rinse and repeat until all enemies are dead.

Defensive Passives

The prime strength of the Spearazons, Javazons and Tankazons, defensive passives are a good bonus for the bowazon, but are not mandatory: if you follow the Tao, melee combat should never happen, and Slow Missiles, Decoy and Valkyrie are tools allowing a bowazon to effectively disarm any ranged opponent. But still, let's look at this interesting subtree.

The power of the Defensive Passives as opposed to other forms of Defense (Defense, Damage Reduction/Resistances, Blocking...) is that they are always reliable: no matter what enemy is attacking, what difficulty level you are playing at or what attack is incoming, a successful Dodge or Avoid will save you. People with bad connection speed or Hardcore Players are known to invest a bit more into defensive passives.

Dodge (Clvl6, DR)

Dodge is used against melee attacks when the amazon is standing still. Hint: she shouldn't. Dodge requires a 12 points investment to reach 50%, which is steep considering how little a bowazon is stationary. Diminishing Returns quickly hit Dodge. I would recommend putting only one point into Dodge, and let skill bonuses take care of the rest.

Avoid (Clvl 12, DR)

Avoid is a bit more useful for a bowazon, as it allows her to escape ranged attacks while standing still (in Strafe-lock for example). 50% in Avoid is easy to reach, requiring only 7 points. But a good use of SM, Decoy and Valkyrie is generally preferable to pumping Avoid.

Evade (Clvl 24, DR)

Once the bane of bowazons fighting Diablo (thanks to a bug that locked the bowazon in the same place until the animation was over into Diablo's Fire Lines and dreaded Lightning Breath of Death), Evade has been fixed in this case and is probably the most useful defensive passive for a bowazon, as it is used for all kind of attacks reaching the bowazon while she is moving.

Don't overdo it, though: due to very steep diminishing returns, and depending on the amount of skill bonuses you wear, one point in Evade may be more than enough.

Evade works against all ranged attacks having a physical part. It is also useful against several area of effect spells, like the Blizzard used by Zakarum priests in Act 3.

Offensive Passives

A very powerful sub-tree, the offensive passives are the prime target of people calling for nerfs. And somewhat rightly so, as the effects of those three skills affect nearly all of the amazon's attacks in a powerful way.

Critical Strike (Clvl 1, DR)

Critical Strike (CS) gives you a growing chance of inflicting double damage with a physical attack (this skill doesn't work with elemental attacks, such as Ice Arrow or Immolation). Thus, while evaluating your bowazon's damage potential, you can add CS as a flat percentage to your physical damage. Other skills (Strafe, Guided Arrow) give you a percent-base damage bonus, but this only takes into account weapon damage, while CS actually takes into account your Dexterity rating. More often than not, investing an extra point into CS will result in a greater damage increase over time than investing into a damage-enhancing skill.

There is an item-based version of Critical Strike, called Deadly Strike (DS). DS works exactly the same, but doesn't cumulate with CS as of 1.09. Having your damage multiplied by 4 is not possible anymore: if one of those properties kicks in, the other won't.

Unless you use a very specific build (elemental specialist, or amazon loaded with Deadly Strike items), there is no reason at all not to invest in CS. Good breakpoints for CS are 8 (over 50%), 11 (58%, after which steep diminishing returns start appearing), and 16 (65%, the last 2% jump).

Penetrate (Clvl 18)

Penetrate looks great on paper, but doesn't work as well as it seems for a bowazon. This skill increases your Attack Rating (AR) by a percent-based value. At first it seems very good. But there are three problems with it.

First, most bowazons concentrate on increasing their Dexterity. Thus, they already typically have very high AR values anyway. HardCore players invest more into Penetrate because they have to remove points from Dex to increase their Vitality instead.

Second, the actual To Hit value depends from AR opposed to DR, but also from the level difference between the player and the monster. And Penetrate doesn't help for this second factor. On the playing field, players investing lots into Penetrate don't connect much more than players with much lower skill level.

Third: there are only four bowazon attacks that require an AR check: normal attack, Magic Arrow, Multishot and Strafe. And most players don't use normal attack or Magic Arrow at all.

As a result, I would recommend investing only one point into Penetrate (the first point is the best one anyway, as it gives a larger bonus), and letting skill bonuses do the rest.

Pierce (Clvl 30)

The best bowazon skill, and perhaps one of the 4 or 5 best skills in the game. Pierce works with all amazon skills, provided the player takes some thinking about building monsters clusters (tactic referred to as "herding", and made popular by javazons) and learns a little about positioning. Experienced bowazons are able to out-kill anyone using what the average player would consider a lousy bow only through the virtues of well-used skills and piercing.

Contrary to what the tables suggest, Pierce has no real Diminishing Returns, as the probability of successive Pierces increases a lot even with the last skill points. A successful Pierce hitting another monster in line at least doubles your damage for this shot. For certain Area of Effect skills (Immolation or FA), the results can be much, much better due to overlapping effect zones (as explained in the Freezing Arrow section).

Unless you are using Piercing items (Razortail, Buriza do Kyanon...), having 12 points in Pierce for 75% chance of Piercing is highly recommended. When you are near the end of the game, and you don't know what to do with your points, you can always invest into Pierce and max it. This skill is that good.

Warning: it seems that Pierce can only occur a maximum of 4 times with the same attack. This makes the theory of successive Pierce a bit less true...