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Ah, the equipment! The heart and bones of LoD, with its tons of super-powerful items (the "uber"
gear). The cause for endless Magic Find runs, and what still drives many players to the game, more than one year
after LoD came out.
LoD changed lots of things about equipment: back in CD2, the best toys were the rare items, with unique and
set items being relegated to the role of curiosity, providing some functions normally unfindable on rare equipment
slots. But rares were the most generally useful items. LoD changed the way equipment and especially rare items work
in five fundamental ways:
The existence of very powerful (downright overpowered in some cases) ready-made items. Those can be
unique items that beat every possible rare combination, powerful sets with interesting interacting properties,
or runewords (which are kind of customizable uniques) socketing and customization: by socketing a rune or jewel into an existing item, it is possible to
enhance its properties, and thus helps give a unique item the kind of properties mix that would appeal on a rare
item. new "magic-only" affixes, far more powerful than what could spawn even on the best rare. Once
again, Blizzard overdid their initial goal, which was giving some more choices to the player. There is no contest
than the most important property of a weapon is damage. By making magical items able to have much more damage than
the most powerful rare weapon would have, Blizzard just changed the focus from "rares are the only way to go"
to "high-end magical items are the only way to go". charms: this one is a good one. Charms are a very interesting feature of LoD, and one that has lots
of potential. Charms replaced one of the most important values of rares, which was all those "little modifiers"
adding up to end into a powerful equipment build: some resistances, a little bit of life or mana, run speed,
hit recovery... All those important affixes can now be found on charms, allowing the player to focus on damage
on its main equipment slots. Affix pool corruption: the introduction of tons of new affixes, most of them completely useless, made
it extremely difficult to get a good rare item with useful properties. Level one Poison Dagger charges and low
bonuses to Stamina have replaced leech and good resistances, for example.
Now for a minor rant: LoD new equipment features sent game balance down the drain. Thanks to the incredible
design flaw of "balance by rarity" and to a less than properly secured environment (the
supposedly "cheat-free" Realms), LoD has quickly turned into a click-fest populated by godly
characters, unkillable by all but the worst boss packs, or by the player's stupidity. Those
new toys also gave birth to a vast number of nerfs, ranging from the diminishing returns on
run/walk and weapon speed to the incredibly silly global 50% physical resistance on all monsters
in Hell difficulty. This was not done without casualties: several very interesting character
builds (for the bowazon as well as for all other character classes) were rendered impossible to
play without the top-end gear, as generic monsters and the global game difficulty proved too tough. On
the other hand, people having the luck (or the dedication, or the low ethics) to acquire the high-end
toys were definitely handed a free pass, as balancing the game for such high-end gear while keeping it
at least doable for less fortunate players (and God helps Single Players) is simply impossible.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not ranting because I'm jealous of people having those kind of items (I actually own
most of them). I'm ranting because the creeping featurism turned my favorite game into a generic click-fest,
and, above everything, hindered the good-will players to the profit of script-kiddies, Ebay sellers, and
exploiters. The urge to own all the new toys also turned a perfectly understandable love of the game into
a kind of insane addiction. But enough ranting for now. ;)
This equipment section will be divided into 3 main parts: the first and shortest one will describe what
modifiers are interesting to a bowazon, and on what equipment slots. The second one will be about ready-made
items, with short descriptions of many popular items (more information about ready-made items can be found at
the The Horadrim Library). The last part will explain some
equipment balancing tricks for a bowazon (using alternate weapon slot, socketing quests and charms wisely).
Over the course of playing, a character typically gets access to tons of items: most of them
drop from random monsters, but others can be gambled, bought, or obtained as quest rewards or from specific
bosses. Following the excellent work of Bolshoi Too in his impressive and still unmatched javazon FAQ, this
section will describe the different modifiers available in the game, and how they impact a bowazon, listed
by efficiency. This will help you evaluate your magical and rare items quickly, by looking for their properties
in the list.
But before reading too much into this list, remember that equipping a bowazon is a matter of balance. Fine-tuning
a bowazon's equipment is not slapping all enhanced damage equipment you can put on, with just two pieces of leech
jewelry. While this may get you a long way in the cow level, remember we are not talking about this kind of
bowazon (that doesn't require a guide anyway) here.
Those are the modifiers an average bowazon really wants to have to some extent, in order to
finish the game without too much trouble. Specialist builds may or may not require some of those affixes, but
they are the exception rather than the rule.
Enhanced Damage (ED): either percent-based, bonuses to
minimum or maximum damage, or scaling damage (damage bonus that increases with your character level). Enhanced Damage
is the most important property for increasing your physical damage output and thus kill enemies faster (remember
the Tao?). It is of course mostly found on the bow itself. Except in very close
cases, use the bow that will yield the best damage over time (more on this later). ED can also be found on
other specific items and in jewels. My recommendation would be to completely dedicate your bow slot to damage,
and not really think about it elsewhere. An exception would be for good jewels with both some kind of additional
damage and other interesting properties, and for charms. Mana and Life leech (ML and LL): the bread and butter of a
regular bowazon. Mana and life leech are one of the reasons bowazons are so powerful, as they can apply them to
a number of targets very quickly. And since they hit from a distance, life leech only helps for the occasionally
connecting hit, and as such doesn't mean as much as for a physical contact build (like a barbarian, a paladin, a
spearazon...). Generally, and depending on your bow damage, you can do very well in Hell with about 10% mana and 10%
life leech. People using low damage bows or using very high mana cost skills (such as high level Immo or FA) will
typically want more leech (especially mana). On the other hand, owners of very high damage bows can adequately get
along with just 5% mana and life leech. Mana and life leech now spawn on about every affix slot: helms (uniques or
circlets), jewelry (rings for life and amulets for mana, except for a few unique items), weapon, runes/gems (socketed
in weapons, Amn for life and Vex for mana, and skulls for dual leech), gloves, some belts (uniques and set),
armors (uniques). Increased Attack Speed (IAS): not completely a must-have
modifier, but very close. IAS is one of the three easiest ways (with ED and Dexterity) to increase your damage
over time. In some cases, a well-placed IAS piece of equipment will give a tremendous boost to your damage over
time, much more than what some ED equipment would have given you. The rules governing IAS and how you can use it
effectively will be described with more detail in the Speedazon section
of this guide. Basically, IAS depends both
on your inherent weapon speed and your additional IAS modifiers, and is governed by speed breakpoints (a speed
breakpoint is an amount of IAS for which your attack effectively becomes faster). As a rule of thumb, if adding
an IAS piece of equipment allows you to jump to the next speed breakpoint and doesn't deprive you from a mandatory
slot (like leech), then there is no reason not to use it. Balancing weapon speed is perhaps one of the most fun
parts of equipment optimization. IAS comes on weapons, on several unique/set items, and in the form of runes (Shael
in weapon) and jewels (jewels of Fervor). Fast Run/Walk (FRW): a slow bowazon is often a dead bowazon. Not
much else to say on Fast/Run walk, it's mostly found on boots (although it can appear on rare circlets and is included
on many non-boots set/unique items), but now charms are a very popular way of getting more FRW. Cold Damage: as was explained in the Cold sub-tree section,
cold damage and especially duration are added together to provide extremely long freezing/chilling time. This is
a Good Thing (tm). Cold Damage can be found on bows, amulets, various uniques/sets (RavenFrost ring and Eye
of Etlitch amulet are very popular choices), runes/jewels, and in the form of charms. Since it can spawn on
charms as either a prefix or a suffix, it is very easy to get good charms with cold damage and whatever other
affix you like. You should always try to have at least 1 second cold duration in Hell, which means a total
of 4 seconds (because duration is quartered in Hell). This is a bare minimum, and higher freeze times are
obviously very recommended.
This section lists the modifiers you will want to a degree or another in your equipment. If
adding one of those modifiers doesn't deprive you from a mandatory modifier, then you should consider using it. Great
bowazons are noticed by their uses of such modifiers, and the way they balance them against the "Must have" modifiers.
Dexterity bonuses: the third way to increase damage over
time. As a single point in Dexterity gives a bonus of 1% of the weapon's damage, it is not surprising if many
bowazons have 50 or more additional Dex points in the form of equipment (50 is probably a bit conservative on
my side). Dex bonuses can be found on all equipment slots, from headgear to boots. Chance to cast the Amplify Damage curse (AD): ideally,
this should belong to the "Must have" section, as AD is the absolute best way to cut through non physical immune (PI)
monsters like a hot knife through butter. AD works by removing 100% to the physical resistance of the target (it
doesn't work on PI critters, though). In Normal and Nightmare, this doubles your damage output. In Hell, monsters
have a base 50% Physical Resistance, so your actual physical damage output (not elemental) in this case is
tripled! Freezing Arrow (especially when combined with Pierce) is probably the best way to trigger AD. Why
didn't I list this in the "Must have" section? Because there are very few ways to get it: some bows can have
it at the lowish Slvl 1 (very small area), but otherwise the only way to get it is either using the WitchWild String
unique Short Siege Bow or one of two unique amulets: the Atma's Scarab (on which the other properties aren't
exactly stellar), or the 1.08 version of the Saracen's Chance (probably the best amazon amulet, but a very
expensive item). Skill bonuses: while absolutely not mandatory, skill
bonuses are what make certain bowazon builds (mainly those who work with Increasing Returns skills
like Freezing Arrow) very powerful. For an average bowazon, a single bonus to all skills gives: better
defensive potential (passives, better Valk...) and much better offensive potential (offensive passives
and bow skills). Not bad for a single equipment slot, even if this increase is only a few percents
generally. Skill bonuses can be found on bow, gloves, armors (uniques), headgear, amulets, and 2 unique
rings (Stone of Jordan and Bul-Khatos Wedding Band), as well as on charms. It is in certain cases best not
to have too many skill bonuses, as the cost for several skills can become hard to manage (Freezing Arrow,
Immolation, Multishot, Valkyrie). Life bonuses: it is usually more effective to get a
higher life total from your equipment (especially charms) than from your stats, and pump Dexterity rather
than Vitality. Consider it: a decent small life charm can give 15 to 20 Life points. 15 is the equivalent
of 5 Vitality points. On the other hand, the maximum amount of Dexterity you can get on a small charm is 2
points. As usual, YMMV. Crowd control modifiers: you may have personal preferences,
but most bowazons use some kind of item-based crowd control. Those include Freezes Target (different from cold
damage), Hit blinds target, Knocks Target Back, Hit Causes Monster to Flee (Slows Target should be included in
this list, but it is currently bugged on the Realms). Those modifiers do not kill monsters directly, but they
provide a bowazon with the power to control the flow of battle. A little warning, some people (melee fighters
mostly) do not like partying with bowazons using Knockback or Flee, as it makes their task very hard. Also,
necromancers may not like Flee or Blind, as those properties override their own curses when they trigger. More
on this in the Party play chapter. Crowd Control modifiers spawn on many equipment slots, especially on unique
and set items, with the notable exception of Knockback, which can be obtained by the Hitpower Gloves crafting
recipe. Of all Crowd Control modifiers, I find Knockback to be the best one, as it is generally very reliable (the
other ones trigger depending on the level difference, which can be a pain).
An extra word of caution about Knockback, though. There are certain builds that completely rely on monsters
staying in the same place, like Javazons and Meteor Sorceresses, while other builds like Trapper assassins
and Artillery necromancers are much more efficient against compact crowds. If you party with those classes,
please think of applying Freezing Arrow first on the monsters before unleashing MS/Strafe at them, it will
greatly ease the life of your partners. Thanks for them, because careless use of Knockback really ruins
their build! Resistances: what? I thought a bowazon was never to
be hit? In theory, yes. In practice, lag, situation assessment mistakes, bad luck and some very specific
monsters or events (Ghoul Lords and Act5 Catapults) will mean that you will have to take some hits. Melee
hits are generally avoidable, unless your connection really sucks, but ranged attacks can sometimes be a
problem, and the most popular of them are elemental-based. So while having a much higher life total could
be an option, having at least some resistances is certainly as efficient. I'm not advocating maxing all
resistances in Hell (without resistances-enhancing skills and without using a shield, it's very difficult
to do), but your goal should be to have positive or slightly negative resistances in Hell difficulty,
with Fire and especially Lightning getting the bunch of your attention. While the Resist All property
is of course very nice to have, individual resists stacking up on several equipment slots can be just as
good. For example, a ring with two 25% resists is better overall than a ring with 10% to all resists (the
first one gives a total of 50%, while the second one gives only 40% total). If you have a vast selection
of gear, the best way to improve your resists is generally to combine rare items (jewelry, headgear, gloves
and boots are good slots for this) with high individual resistances. Cannot be Frozen: being chilled (a character can never
be completely frozen except by the very dangerous Laggy-Realms monster) is dangerous: it reduces both your
damage output over time, your reactivity, and your run/walk speed. Thus, items with "Cannot be Frozen" (specific
set/unique/runeword items, and the Cham rune socketed in armor or helm) are extremely valuable, even more so for
a fragile bowazon depending on her speed and reactivity to survive. The lesser version of Cannot be Frozen (Half-Freeze
duration) is about useless, though. Warning: Cannot be Frozen items do not protect against the Holy Freeze Aura
used by many aura-enchanted monsters. AR bonus or Ignores Target Defense: those are important,
depending on your Dexterity. Keep in mind that even in the case of Ignores Target Defense (which doesn't work
against bosses), the biggest influence on your actual To Hit probability will probably come from the level
difference. AR bonuses are further boosted by the Penetrate skill. There are several modifiers that will
give an AR bonus scaling with your level, and those are very good to have. Also keep in mind that Dexterity
will improve both your AR and your damage. Elemental Damage: once anecdotic in CD2, Elemental Damage
was made very important in LoD, thanks to the appearance of Physical Immune monsters, as well as good work
by Blizzard on elemental damage affixes (i.e. including affixes doing an actually noteworthy amount of
elemental damage). While the Fire Arrow bug can be exploited to deal tremendous amounts of Fire Damage, and
while the amazon has in theory decent elemental skills damage-wise (Ice Arrow and Immolation mostly,
because Freezing Arrow is more a crowd attack skill than a single target skill), we encounter two
problems: the first one is Physical Immune/Fire Immune bosses (which can't be killed with the Fire Arrow
bug/feature), the second one is mana management. Typically, bowazons have low mana pools, and their good
elemental skills are pretty expensive. This means that killing a physical immune boss with any skill
except Fire Arrow is generally very difficult, and implies either a large mana potion consumption, or
frequent trips to town. The solution is, of course, to use item-based elemental damage. As far as I'm
concerned, the best source by far for elemental damage would be using the 2nd slot weapon with a fast,
high elemental damage bow. I tend to prefer lightning damage, since cold damage typically has lower
average damage (but cold has other advantages), poison is dealt over time (a bowazon running against
a PI boss typically has little time to deal with him before he comes to her (the Tao,
remember?)), and Fire damage can be obtained through exploiting the Fire Arrow bug, unless you are opposed to it.
In this section, we will talk about various modifiers that will generally be used to make
the difference between two otherwise equivalent rare items. While those modifiers are useful (no doubt
about it), they are never a matter or life and death to your character.
Magic Find (MF): Magic Find improves the chances
that a monster will drop a magical, rare, set or unique item. Keep in mind that it does not improve the
item type (prepare to be buried under rare Short War Bows found in Act 4 Hell), nor does it impact the
quality of the affixes spawning on items (+ Light Radius and 7% Poison Resist, here we go! ). Unless you have
large amounts of Magic Find on your character, don't have too much hope of finding the godliest items out
there (whether those items are necessary to enjoy the game is another question entirely). Those require
luck and patience, and generally building a specific character dedicated to MF through boss farming (see
the sectionon MFing with your bowazon). MF can be found on all item slots by
courtesy of unique items mostly. Extra Gold Find (GF): GF is much more reliable than MF. But
since a bowazon typically has low expenses (none of the tremendous repair costs plaguing barbarians or assassins,
for example), all this extra gold will probably end u[ being gambled away. Thus, while nice GF is not important. Take
into account that gold is shared with your party, so if you can have some GF without losing your killing power,
your party members will probably thank you a lot. Extra Damage and AR against Demons or the Undead: while
those modifiers are good, they are never a replacement for good old-fashioned ED. When appearing on very good
items (like the GoldStrike Arch unique Gothic Bow or the Laying of Hand set Bramble Mitts), they are of course
worthy of note. But who here uses a Melody bow exclusively? Mana bonus: this one is easy. You will probably want some
additional mana, but you should never go out of your way to get some. Mana bonuses can be found on just any piece
of equipment and on charms. Try to find either rare or unique/set items with both mana bonuses and other good
modifiers, or use dual-mod charms. Strength bonuses: those are good provided you planned
your equipment ahead of building your character. If you already have enough Str to wear your gear, then extra Str
is not doing you any good. If you can plan ahead, then any bonus Str point is equivalent to a Dex point. And we
know Dex is good. ;) Str can be found on just about any piece of equipment. Lesser Item Requirements: Those are similar to Str bonuses:
if you can plan them ahead, they are a good way to pump Dex instead of Str. If you didn't plan your gear, then
they are a loss of an affix slot. They can spawn on many slots of equipment, but to you bow and armor are
probably the slots where they matter most. Prevents Monster Healing (PMH): depending on your bow
damage, you may want a piece of equipment that prevents monster healing as, especially in large games, monster
regeneration can really slow you down in your killing. Generally, PMH spawns on unique and set items, or as a
random affix on melee weapons. Deadly Strike (DS): the item based version of Critical
Strike, Deadly Strike's usefulness for you will mainly depend on your CS level. Both modifiers can't stack to
provide you with 4 times the damage. If you planned your equipment well, you may want to use some DS equipment
and save a few skill points on CS, but typically skill points are easy to come by for a bowazon. Absorb: a sort of souped-up resistance, absorb is more
useful when the resists are maxed, because it allows a character to bypass the maximum resists limitation (and
even heal when attacked in some cases). To a bowazon generally scrambling for resists, having enough to actually
make good use of absorb gear is very hard. Absorb spawns on unique items, on various equipment slots. Except
for the Ravenfrost ring, those items are generally not very helpful to a bowazon.
Sockets: extra sockets (as a magical affix) are nice. But
unless you get really lucky (by scoring a Jeweler's Plate of the Whale, for example), they are not that useful. After
all, the "jeweler's" family of affixes are prefixes, meaning most interesting weapon combination are
impossible. Besides, you have the socket quest available for your items, and you can't put runewords
into magical socketable items. A socket prefix can spawn on socketable slots (armor, bow, headgear).
Shorter Poison Duration: considering poisoning monsters
have a definite tendency to re-poison you while they are alive, and considering poison alone can't kill you,
shorter poison duration is definitely not something very important. Stamina bonus: this one is easy. While somewhat nice to
have in the beginning of the game, typically you will get enough Stamina over the course of leveling. Stamina
bonuses mostly spawn on boots and charms. Stamina regeneration/Slower stamina drain: this one is
much the same. While nice early on, your stamina total in the end of the game should allow you to run for long
distances already. A commodity in very intricate mazes, nothing more. Generally spawns on boots. mana per kill: at first mana per kill looks like a very
nice bonus, and early on in the game it is. After all, it's some kind of mana recovery that, unlike mana leech,
also works on Physical Immunes and unleechable monsters, right? The problem is that unless you stack tons
of "triumphant" bonuses, you will soon discover that near the end of the game, unless you can leech, the amount
of mana needed to destroy a single monster is generally astronomic when compared to the triumphant bonus you get
on his death. Even the low cost skills Guided Arrow and Fire Arrow can't hope to recover the mana spent to
destroy a tough PI boss. Variant material. Generally spawns on jewelry, circlets, bow, and on several unique
items. Faster Hit Recovery (FHR): since you don't tank and try
not to get hit (the Tao), you don't need FHR. Besides, considering the very low
life amount a bowazon has, a situation where you would need FHR (trapped in the middle of a crowd) is generally
equivalent to instant death. The few melee hits you will get through either lag or bad moves is not enough to
warrant wanting FHR. This modifier can be found on boots, belts, armor, charms, and on several unique equipment
slots. Damage Reduction: Damage-reduction exists in two forms,
percent-based and flat. The percent-based version can only be found on unique items (Shaftstop, Vampire Gaze...)
and with the extra-rare Ber rune, while the flat damage reduction exists on many items. Both forms are about
useless for a bowazon, because of the Tao. Random flat reduction found on a few
items used for their other properties doesn't mean much in Hell difficulty (when a minotaur hits you for 100
damage points, you aren't very glad to have 3 points on damage reduction on your ring), and as far as percent-based
damage reduction items are concerned, only Vampire Gaze and String of Ears are interesting for a bowazon (Vampire Gaze
for its nice dual leech and cold damage properties, and String of Ears for the life leech). Magic Damage Reduction (MDR): once very useful against
some types of attack (like Firewall or Diablo's Lightning Breath) because of a bug, MDR was nerfed into
oblivion in 1.09. Same as for flat Damage Reduction: when comparing the amount of MDR you can typically
get on a few random items to the huge elemental damages dealt to you near the end of the game, you quickly
understand the reason why this is in the "Nothing to write home about" section. Spawns on about every slot,
and on a variety of unique items. Open Wounds: using complicated rules (the amount of
damage dealt by Open Wounds depends on your level), Open Wounds is another of those modifiers that look great
on paper, but are nearly useless in game. Open Wounds makes a monster bleed continuously, and lose a certain
amount of hit points every second. Too slow to kill bosses, and useless against normal monsters, generally
already dead before it has time to do any noteworthy damage. Spawns on unique and set items mostly. Crushing Blow: in CD2, Crushing Blow (CB, do not confuse
with CorwinBrute please) was a great modifier (that didn't work for ranged attacks). LoD gave us Crushing Blow
working with bows, and many more sources for getting it, but, in a typical Blizzard fashion, nerfed it to near
uselessness at the same time. Crushing Blow gives you a chance to halve a random monster's (not a boss) hit points
after your attack. This would be good, except:
- It is affected by Physical Resistance (and as such halved in Hell)
- It is halved again on bows
- It doesn't scale with the number of players in the game
As it is, Crushing Blow on bows is variant material, or a tidy source of additional damage. Spawns on
unique/set items only, with the exception of the extra-rare Ber rune socketed in a weapon and a crafting
recipe (Blood gloves). Higher maximum resistances: since a bowazon generally
has other things to do than get maxed resistances, items granting higher maximum resistance bonuses are
generally useless for her. Spawns on unique/set items, and using 4 runes (Gul, Vex, Ohm and Lo), all of
which could be much better used elsewhere. Life Regeneration: or the best way to believe you could
perhaps avoid using a Town Portal. In combat situations, Life Regeneration bonuses are not very useful, as the
rate at which you get damaged is generally way faster than the Regeneration rate (FYI, Life Leech, on the
other hand, is instant). Life Regeneration generally has two uses that may make it worthwhile for you: between
fights if you are low on leech, because it gives you some more life before taking the next pack (obviously more
efficient if you play carefully, and don't rush like mad to the next monsters), and if you stack a lot of
similar items, in which case the net amount of life gained per second may become useful. An interesting
property of Life Regeneration is that it helps a lot versus poison attacks, which can make a difference
in some dangerous fights. Faster Mana regeneration: a great boon for spellcasters,
mana regeneration is generally useless for bowazons, except the mageazon variety (more on this later). As the
rate is indexed on your total mana pool, it's generally futile to build a mana pool large enough so that faster
mana regeneration becomes useful. Spawns on specific items, and through the use of socketed skulls in
helm/armor. Much like Life Regen items, Faster Mana regen can be somewhat useful between fights and if
you have several items with it.
The complete junk. Some of those affixes are just useless to a bowazon (although they
could be very useful for other classes), but most of those are the true mark of Ormus' rings and Anya's Rare items:
they just keep frustrating the player a lot, but screenshots can be used to entertain your friends.
Defense Rating: getting a Defense Rating worth something
in LoD is generally not easy, and is probably an exercise best kept for melee classes, who get nice defense-enhancing
skills (the Barbarian with Shout and Iron Skin, for example). Since you shouldn't be getting hit often, and
since Defense Rating is probably the weakest form of defense anyway, you shouldn't go out of your way to
acquire great defense rating items. Besides, those items generally require huge amounts of Str, and the
armors are usually heavy-weight, slowing you down. Hint: Arkaine's Valor is not
the best choice for a bowazon. Spawns on all armor slots, as well as a special property on several items. (Defense
bonus on a non-armor piece applies to your total defense). DR versus Missiles: about as useless as generic Defense Rating
since Decoy, Valk and Slow Missiles are so much better to protect you from ranged attacks. Spawns on specific
set/unique items. Light Radius: the flagship of stinky modifiers, and the
signature of the "best" Ormus rings. Not only is Light Radius about useless on its own, it's capped at a
ridiculous value (bonuses after +5 Light Radius don't do anything). It's only use would be to counteract
specific items with negative Light Radius. Spawns on: about every damn item that could have been interesting
otherwise. Damage goes to mana (vulpine): this bonus is very
interesting for melee classes and spellcasters, but typically much less for bowazons (who avoid getting
hit, remember?). This item works by adding to your mana a percentage of the damage dealt to you. Melee
fighters love it against Physical Immune/Mana burn monsters, but a bowazon shouldn't encounter those
monstrosities in close range anyway (or she will be dead before the Vulpine bonus can help her anyway). Spawns
on amulets, and on various unique/set items. Energy Bonus: see the section on Stats to understand
why Energy bonus is pitiful. The returns are way too low for an amazon when compared to a flat mana bonus. Spawns on:
tons of slots, but you don't want it since it's useless anyway, remember? Fast Cast Rate (FCR): this one is different. It is a
very good mod, just not for a bowazon. FCR affects the following Amazon skills: Inner Sight (useless), Slow
Missiles, Decoy, and Valkyrie. Since a player has no reason to spam any of those skills, FCR thus becomes
useless for a bowazon. Yes, sometimes, the tenth of second you could have won with FCR would have helped
you survive while casting a Valk, but still the occurrences are far too rare to bother IMHO. A nice rare FCR
amulet or circlet can have a good trading value for another class, though. Spawns on: specific set/unique
items and jewelry/circlets. Self-repair: since bows don't have durability and since
you seldom get hit, self-repair is all but useless, except perhaps in the case of etheral pieces of
equipment. Spawns on: armor slots that could have used some useful bonus instead. Indestructible: same deal as self-repair. Nuff said. All Spell Charges: seriously, the idea of charged
items could have been nice, except the skill levels on them are totally nuts. What use is a level 4 Teeth
or Charged Bolt on a required level 45 item, I wonder. Pure variant material. Spell Charges are one of the
main reasons why rare items mostly suck in LoD: affix pool corruption. The only one that could
be useful if you have nothing more to do would be a Lower Resist wand on your second weapon slot for elemental arrow
specialists. Big whoop. Spawns on: most rare items, with unbelievable level requirements. Oh, and Charges send repair
costs through the roof, by the way. All Chances to cast spell XXX except for Amplify Damage:
same as Spell Charges, the chances to cast spell XXX are best used in the case of Fist of Heaven to provide
nice fireworks. The damage is generally very low and/or the spell ill-chosen. Still cool to look at, though. Spawns
on many rares, and on specific uniques that often have other redeeming qualities. Faster Block: do you use a shield? No, you use a bow. Next
one. Attacker takes damage: this one is useless for two
reasons. The first one is that you don't want to get it anyway, and if you get hit your last problem will
probably be "Did I inflict any retaliation damage?" Second, except for some very specific unique items (and
even for those, it's not pretty), the amount of damage dealt is absolutely pitiful when compared to the
monster's life total. Spawns on: items Blizzard thought would be fun to ruin with this useless property.
Sure thing. While I do not have the time or the willingness to evaluate all existing equipment, I
will do my best to present all the existing bow solutions, from the most underrated to the "uber-items" (except
for normal unique bows, more on those later). I will also describe interesting items on other equipment slots,
as well as useable sets and partial sets combinations.
This is your main slot. Your bowazon will probably switch her bow many times over her
carrier. Fortunately, Blizzard gave us a nice variety of unique bows to play with. If the normal unique bows
are absolute jokes, and the elite ones are so overpowered it's not even funny, the exceptional unique bows all
have a very distinct flavor, and most of them can definitely be used for a long time.
If I was a good writer, I would give you a great, funny, full of poetic imagery rant like AK404
does so well. Sadly I'm not. So instead, you will get the good old CB style rant.
I'm not describing any of the unique bows for a simple reason: they all suck and are completely unusable
because of level requirements. When LoD started, one of the things Blizzard did was try their best to tone
down "twinking" (the act of equipping a character with gear he could never have found early on in the game,
in order to help him breeze through the beginning of the game). For this, they added level requirements on
every unique item in the game. In some cases, those minimum levels were good, but in the case of normal bows
they failed horribly. Not only are those bows useless for their required levels, but they also suck when
compared to the low-end exceptional unique bows, or to any rare bow imported from CD2, or to some rare bows
found in LoD, or to a socketed Hunter Bow with flawed topazes... You get the idea.
The only one that could potentially be somewhat useful is the Rogue's Bow for
baby speedazons, and even about this one I'm not sure.
Simply put: don't waste your time with normal unique bows (and don't even get me started about crossbows). Socket
a Hunter Bow with gems (or 20 poison damage jewels, even better and with which you can clear Normal difficulty
in no time), and use it instead to get a good start. It will bring you much faster and with less frustration to
where you want to be. Which serves as a clever transition to the second part, the Exceptional Unique bows.
While normal unique bows all suck, Exceptional unique bows are a great case of good design (kudos
to whoever designed them at Blizzard). Very detailed descriptions of all those bows can be found at
the Horadrim Library. I will just underline what
makes them good in a few words.
Skystrike: a very good bow, that flawlessly makes an
excellent transition from main weapon in a bowazon's young years to an excellent second slot weapon later
in the game. For its required level, Skystrike features good damage, excellent speed, a skill bonus exactly
when you need it the most (i.e. when you are busy acquiring your end-game skills
like Valkyrie, Pierce and Freezing Arrow), and tons of elemental damage (in the form of some hefty Lightning
damage, and a chance to cast a level 6 meteor, which is about the maximum a sorceress could have around this
level). Later in the game, the physical damage starts to feel low, and the meteor isn't that great, but this
bow is still great for quickly applying a good amount of lightning damage very quickly. Riphook: I don't like Riphook much because of the slow
target bug, which causes terrible desynchronisation between the client and the server. But with pretty good
damage, very high speed, and some life leech, it is a speedazon's dream at this time of her career. Riphook
Matriarchs are not unheard of, so this bow is definitely a good weapon, although most players will probably
want to switch to something else (with higher damage mostly) later in their character's life. Kuko Shakaku: despite its funny name, the Kuko Shakaku
is to be considered seriously. A well-designed bow centered around Fire Damage, the Kuko is one of the favorite
weapons used by Mageazons, because it helps them so much. The gems on this bow are not the damage (which is
nothing to laugh at, though), but the large skill bonuses (+3 to all bow skills, and +6 to Immolation Arrow,
a skill which is on increasing returns) and the incredible 50% bonus to Pierce (meaning a small 5 points in
Pierce will already grant you 100% Pierce). The Fire Damage is also good for killing Physical Immunes (in fact,
many people have testified they killed PI monsters much faster using piercing Guided Arrow with Kuko than
using Fire Arrow). The "Fire explosive arrows" property is not very good, considering it only works with
normal attacks and Explosive Arrow. Kuko Shakaku can be used both as a main weapon for certain builds, or
as a secondary weapon for its Fire Damage. Endlesshail: the worst of the exceptional unique bows,
Endlesshail is not very well designed. It is still useable, no doubt about it (thanks to its good damage,
bonus to Strafe, and good cold damage and duration), but it lacks any form of IAS that would have made it
a great bow for speedazons. Too bad. WitchWild String (WWS): or "How to outkill the Burizazons
with a short siege bow". In the hand of a clever amazon, the WWS is a deadly weapon. While its physical damage
does not seem that great at first, the scaling Deadly Strike, and above everything the triggered Amp Damage can
make the effective damage (which is quite different from the "bragging rights number on the Lying Character
Screen") skyrocket. Since a decent amount of Critical Strike and the scaling Deadly Strike give you a very
good chance at double damage, and Amp triples the effective damage in Hell (and is very easy to trigger
against packs with FA), you are looking at a constant 3 times the listed damage (taking into account the
blanket physical resistance in Hell). Not bad... The 40% to all resistances is a boon for HC players. WWS
can be used either as a main weapon, or as a secondary weapon for triggering Amp before switching to a
more damaging weapon. Cliffkiller: a good middle-life bow. With high
damage, Knockback, and a nice Life and skills bonus, the Cliffkiller is a decent weapon. It lacks any
form of IAS or Leech, though, and shows less "personality" than the other bows. Deadly in the hands of
a Rogue mercenary (more on this later). Magewrath: another surprisingly effective weapon. With
good damage, and decent AR, Dexterity and skills (+1 to all skills, +3 to Guided Arrow) bonuses, Magewrath
would already be a decent weapon. What makes it more than that is a nice crowd control modifier (Hit blinds
target), as well as a godly 15% mana leech, the highest leech bonus on a single bow. Basically, you can use
only Magewrath for your mana leech needs and get away with it without any problems. GoldStrike Arch (GSA): the unique Gothic Bow, the GSA
is one of the best bows in the game. It features very high damage and accuracy (its AR bonus is the equivalent
of 10 to 15 points put into Penetrate), as well as blazing speed (it's the fastest 10 base speed bow in the
game). For its special properties, we get huge damage bonuses to Demons and Undead, a cool SFX-theme with a
chance to cast Fist of Heavens on attack, and a useless Replenish Life. This bow is very versatile, and can
compliment a physical damage build very well (whether it is used in a speed rig or in a beatdown rig). Lycander's Aim: my personal favorite. This bow only has
two less than optimal modifiers: enhanced defense, and an energy bonus. The rest of the modifiers (huge
damage (especially minimum damage), incredible skill bonus, mana leech, increased speed and Dexterity bonus,
not very high requirements) makes it my personal recommendation as far as exceptional bows are concerned. No
matter what you want to do (use elemental skills, use mostly physical damage, or better yet a mix of both),
the Lycander's Aim will help you do it better.
The exceptional unique crossbows mostly suck (because of the way speed interacts with crossbows), except
for the Pus Spitter (which has the interesting property of triggering Lower Resist, and as such could be used
by an elemental specialist much like the WWS is used by physical-based amazons), and the sad subject of the
next paragraph (which will be my only rant about exceptional bows/crossbows).
The Buriza-do Kyanon (BdK): or "What the Hell were
they smoking when they designed this thing?". Also nicknamed "Blizzard Cannon", "Tuna Cannon", "BFG (for
Big F*cking Gun), "Burrito cannon", "Cheese cannon", and many others. The BdK is single-handly responsible
for the bad reputation amazons got on the Realms. While the 1.08 version was interesting (a powerful crossbow
made for a refreshing change), the 1.09 version is so overpowered and pigeonholes the bowazon into a single
stupid role that it is not even funny. We are not talking about " mildly overpowered" here. What we are
talking here is a fat slice of cheese, the stinky French variety. The BFG features incredible damage (both
base and scaling), huge elemental damage (cold, with a lengthy duration), Freezes target, huge speed bonus (nearly
enough on the weapon alone to have it at top speed), a fat Dexterity bonus (more than making up for the
huge Strength requirement) and, worst of all, a moronic 100% Pierce bonus (to get some kind of equivalent,
this means a little 60 points into the Pierce skill). Because it is slow, and because of its incredible Piercing
and cold damage, the Buriza works best with 2 skills: Multishot and Guided Arrow (although FA is also worth
mentioning). Add to this that it's extremely easy to find, has a low level requirement, and you should begin
to understand why players on Battle.net are ranting about "mindless overpowered bowazons". The Tuna Cannon is
the flagship of stereotypical bowazon builds, and as such any amazon wearing this crossbow is often scorned,
which is very sad because not all of them fit the stereotype.
The two elite unique bows are the exact opposite of the normal unique bows: both of them are
way too good. Those bows perfectly embody why "balance by rarity" is a bad idea: an amazon equipped with any of
those two bows can cut through the game with absolutely no difficulty, and is likely to at least mildly irritate
party players by depriving them of kills. Duping also made this "balance by rarity" a moot point, and I would
wager that at least 95% of Windforces and 80% of Eaglehorns on the Realms are duped. The frustrating part is
that back in Diablo1 (where those two bows come from), they were good but not overpowered weapons, and both
had a very specific feeling to them. In their D2 incarnation, they are just a powergamer's wet dream.
Eaglehorn: less brute-force than its counterpart, it
doesn't take a grand D2 analyst to understand why the Eaglehorn is so good: it features impressive damage (with
a scaling property), is extremely reliable (thanks to both a scaling AR bonus as well as ITD), and even has 2
little goodies in the form of a nice Dexterity bonus and a +1 to all skill levels (although at level 69, a
bowazon is likely to have finished her skill assignment). For a bow, Eaglehorn is slow (it has the slowest
base speed, and no IAS), and does not feature any leech (although its damage makes other sources of leech
very effective on their own). It is still a more than very good and reliable bow for a physical damage
specialist. Windforce: or "I really need to try some of those
drugs". Windforce is the best ranged weapon in the game, period. While people
can argue about preferring a hypothetical Cruel XXX Bow of XXX socketed with very specific jewels/runes,
it's unlikely this weapon would be a match for a well-optimized WF build. Its incredible scaling damage
makes its max damage top the best close range weapons, and with both IAS, Knockback and mana leech on the
weapon itself, it also frees too many other equipment slots for a single weapon (only the BFG compares to
Windforce for this). Extreme amazon builds using WF are often in the 6000 to 8000 max damage land, and this
kind of damage can be applied simultaneously to many targets. Windforce is extremely rare, extremely valuable,
and as such extremely duped.
Good rare bows are hard to find, because of affix pool dilution. A nice rare exceptional or
elite bow can still take you through the game, but unless you are playing Single Player or No-Twink, there
are bows available for a handful of chipped gems that flat-out beat any kind of rare bow, except the dream
bow with only the best affixes at their maxed-out value, something which has yet to spawn on Battle.net as
far as I know.
Magical bows are more interesting, because some of them can be bought at shops (thus replacing boring Magic Find
duties with boring shopping duties), or they can be cubed (using the Magical Item + 3 Perfect Gems of any type
recipe). What you want is, of course, a weapon featuring either the Cruel or GrandMaster's prefix, and ideally
a decent/good suffix. Since no good runewords exist for fast bows, and no elite unique either, a magical bow
is nearly mandatory for speedazons. Unfortunately, "low" doesn't even begin to describe the odds of cubing a
really good bow.
Here is some information about elite bows. This information is provided in the following way: Name/Strength
required/Dexterity required/Base speed/Minimum damage-Maximum damage.
Spider Bow/64/143/5/23-50: while not very fast, a high-end
Spider Bow can be a good choice, due to a low Strength requirement. Blade Bow/76/119/-10/21-41: very fast and with low
requirements, the Blade Bow would be the best speedazon bow if Matriarchal didn't exist. Shadow Bow/52/188/0/15-59: with its average speed and
extremely low required Strength, the Shadow Bow is somewhat popular. Its drawback is that you can't buy a
good one at the vendors, you have to cube it or find it. Great Bow/127/107/-10/12-52: oh, the irony. The only
thing great about this bow is the name: the Strength requirement is downright stupid, especially when compared
to the Matriarchal and Blade Bows. Avoid this one. Diamond Bow/89/132/0/33-40: with its very small damage
range, it is easy to make a good Diamond Bow an extremely reliable weapon. Some extreme builds manage to get
those bows to have a minimum damage higher than the maximum, which is of course very nice, as the minimum
damage "pushes" the maximum. Crusader Bow/97/121/10/15-63: a definitely good weapon.
The Crusader is slow, but its Strength requirement is not very high (after all, it's only two points higher
than a Gothic Bow, the old CD2 staple). Its damage is also solid. Crusader Bows can get 6 sockets, making
them very popular for the Silence Rune Word. Ward Bow/72/146/0/20-53: the popularity of the Ward Bow
comes for a great part from the fact that it's easy to shop for a good one (Grandmaster's or Cruel)
in Hell Act 4 and 5. The Ward Bow has no weak points, and a very cool name. Hydra Bow/134/167/10/10-68: the only Hydra Bow worth
mentioning is Windforce. All other Hydra Bows are flat-out beaten by similar Crusader or Grand Matron bows,
if only for the Strength requirement. Hint: Silence Hydra Bows are not worth it. Matriarchal Bow/87/187/-10/20-47: the flagship weapon
of current speedazon builds, the Matriarchal Bow is the best -10 base speed bow, because of its excellent
average damage and inherent skill modifier. You will love
this weapon. :) Grand Matron Bow/108/152/10/14-72: the best 10 base
speed elite bow, the GMB has decent requirements, huge average damage, and inherent skills. Its only
drawback is that a bug prevents it from getting 6 sockets, which is a shame, as a Silence GMB would
really rock.
The fact that Defense Rating is useless for a bowazon doesn't mean she should not chose
her armor slots carefully. In fact, a bowazon has a surprisingly large amount of choice available when
choosing her armor, because DR doesn't matter for her. She is restricted by the amount of Str needed to
wear certain items, but since many high-end armors have lesser requirements, it doesn't matter much.
There isn't much to be found as far as normal headgear is concerned: Tarnhelm
used to be good for MFers, but Stealskull is so much better now it is not even funny. I
would strongly advise not overlooking Biggin's Bonnet and
especially Duskdeep at low levels. Undead Crown
and Wormskull could also find some use with their life leech. But generally speaking,
don't count on unique helms too much for your young bowazon.
In exceptional uniques, the pattern changes a lot, though: there are some quite godly equipment pieces available.
Peasant's Crown: 60 Life, 30 Mana (through Vitality
and Energy bonuses), +1 to all skills and fast run/walk. A very decent helm, although the look on a bowazon
is horrible. Rockstopper: featuring a very defensive package, Rockstopper
is perhaps not the helm of choice for a bowazon, although HC players probably like it for its strong resistances
and decent life boost. Stealskull: perhaps the best exceptional helm for a bowazon,
mostly for the IAS and dual leech properties. The Magic Find on it is also a good feature, and the rest of the
modifiers are not that useful for a bowazon, although they are not a total waste either. Darksight Helm, Valkyrie Wing and Blackhorn's Face: I
will pass on those three helms quickly, they typically don't have much for a bowazon. Perhaps the Valkyrie Wing
could be useful if the Strength requirement wasn't so high. Darksight Helm has mana leech and Cannot be Frozen,
but the other mods leave much to desire. And Blackhorn's Face is much better for a melee fighter, and causes
desynch (the Slow Bug). Crown of Thieves: with huge life leech, a good resist,
and large bonuses to Mana, Life and more importantly Dex, the Crown of Thieves is a very good bowazon helm. And
it doesn't look that bad. ;) Vampire Gaze: everyone and his mother wants one of those,
and people are mostly interested in the Damage Reduction property of the Vampire Gaze. The most interesting
properties of this helm for a bowazon are in fact the dual leech and the nice Cold Damage (and Cold duration). While
it is a great helm, the fact that it is really priced high makes it a luxurious commodity, easily replaced by a
good circlet.
As far as Elite unique Helms are concerned, there is not much to say: the Harlequin's
Crest is much more useful on spellcasters, and the Veil of Steel is way too
heavy for a fragile bowazon.
There are several normal unique armors worth mentioning. I will try to make it short and only
describe three of them.
Greyform: the old CD2 bowazon staple, Greyform is now
more into the category of excellent twinking gear than in the realm of end-game equipment. Still, with good
life leech, two nice resists, and a Dexterity bonus, this armor has lots of features appealing to a bowazon. Twitchthroe: the only armor dedicated speedazons used
back in CD2, there is a good piece of news and a bad one for Twitchthroe lovers: the good one is that in
LoD Twitchthroe is more powerful than ever, with an increased IAS bonus. It still has Dex and Str bonuses,
as well as the less useful FHR, and the completely useless Increased Blocking (for a bowazon anyway). The
bad news is that thanks to socket quests and 4 sockets armor, speedazons have much better toys than Twitchthroe
available. Another end-game equipment that became good twink-gear (which is still far from bad). Silks of the Victor: the most overpriced armor of CD2
turned into a piece of junk that dedicated MFers throw aside... Well, they shouldn't, because (for its required
level) this armor has two interesting mods for a bowazon: +1 to all skills (remember, it is around level 30 that
you need those skill boosts the most), and 5% mana leech (always nice to have).
Let's move to exceptional unique armors. The sky is the limit here. Or rather, your Str is the limit. Don't
fear too much, most of the good armors for a bowazon require little Str.
The Spirit Shroud: while worth mentioning (because of
the +1 to skills and the Cannot be Frozen properties), the Spirit Shroud is more of a spellcaster's armor (you
don't need replenish life, remember?). Skin of the Vipermagi: perhaps the best spellcaster's
armor in the game, the Skin of Vipermagi can be useful to bowazons wanting to boost their resistances and skill
level at the same time. But its power pales in comparison to the Lionheart runeword's. Still a very good armor
for builds needing high skill levels (like mageazons, dinozons or vamps). Skin of the Flayed One and Iron Pelt
are about useless. Crow Caw: while this armor looks good with its Dex bonus
and IAS, Twichthroe is lighter and can be used earlier. Spirit Forge is a nice idea, mostly due to a nice combination
of defensive and offensive features, improved by the presence of two empty sockets for further customisation. Duriel's Shell: one of the most overlooked armors in the
game. With scaling life and DR, good prismatic resistance, a nice Str bonus and Cannot be Frozen, the Shell has
lots to offer to a bowazon caring about her defense. It is a very prized armor in HC. Shaftstop: the armor of PvP players and of idiotic
conformists, Shaftstop has little other value to a PvM bowazon than the nice bonus to life. Blech. Skullder's Ire: one of the armors of choice for MFers,
the Ire has not much to offer to a bowazon, except a +1 to all skill bonuses. Technically, a Wealth armor
could be preferable for the Gold Find bonus. Que-Hegan's Wisdom: a nice armor, much better suited
for spellcasters. If you use an elemental heavy build, it may be an option, although I would tend to suggest
using Skin of the Vipermagi instead. Guardian Angel: if you find it, don't plan on using it
on your bowazon, but rather start a paladin instead. ;) None of the bonuses are particularly useful for a bowazon. Toothrow: I'm really wondering what bonuses could be
useful to a bowazon on Toothrow. Or to any class for that matter. Atma's Wail: lots of bonuses on this armor, but except
for the Dexterity bonus and the small MF bonus, none of them matter for a bowazon. Black Hades: while this armor is very heavy, its bonus
against demons and its 3 empty sockets make it a potential choice. Nothing to write home about, though. Corpsemourn: point me to a bowazon with 170 Strength,
and I will point you to a bad build. ;) Save this armor for your mercenary.
Both Elite unique armors are completely useless for a bowazon: except for Cannot be Frozen,
the Gladiator's Bane is junk, and Arkaine's Valor
requires an indecent amount of Str, and gives very little value to a bowazon (yep, even the 1.08 one).
There are lots of good unique gloves available, but generally speaking you may want
either a rare pair of gloves with properties fitting your build, or even better crafted Hitpower gloves
(for the Knockback modifier).
In normal unique gloves, the Hand of Broc is nice to have early on for the
Dual Leech property. Later in the game, rare dual leech gloves can spawn, with potentially much better
other modifiers.
Bloodfist can help a bowazon for a long time, with its large life bonus (useful
early on, when you are pumping Dex and Str to wield better bows), IAS, and sizable boost to minimum damage.
Probably the best normal unique gloves for a bowazon.
Chance Guards are technically excellent gloves for the people interested in Magic
Find, but I tend to prefer rare gloves with less MF, but generally much better modifiers.
Magefist and Frostburn are better suited to the
elemental-heavy amazons, for their boost to mana regeneration and mana pool respectively. As an interesting
side note, Magefist's bonus to Fire Skills works for Fire Arrow, Exploding Arrow and Immolation.
As far as exceptional unique gloves are concerned, there is less good to be told: all of those gloves
are certainly nice, but all pale in comparison to a good pair of rare/crafted gloves which can be obtained
easily, or in comparison to some excellent Set gloves that exist. The only interesting properties on unique
exceptional gloves are the large bonuses against The Undead on Gravepalm and Ghoulhide, the Fire Damage and Enchant (plus the IAS) on Lava Gout,
and the funny chances to cast on Hellmouth.
Choosing between normal unique belts, a bowazon can consider Nightsmoke
for the resistances bonus, but especially Goldwrap, which is an end-game belt for speed
addicts (and MFers, of course). Unless you need other mods on your belt (like leech), or you don't need the
extra IAS, Goldwrap may very well be the good belt for you.
There is much more choice between exceptional unique belts, as nearly all of those have something to offer to
a bowazon.
String of Ears: one of the most used belts, the best property
the SoE has to offer to a bowazon is the good Life Leech bonus. The damage reduction is nice, but a bowazon doesn't
need it that much. Razortail: unless you really need IAS, Razortail is the best bowazon belt. +10 to Maximum Damage and +15 to Dexterity mean an impressive damage
increase (remember this +10 to Max Damage is affected by Dexterity, auras...), but the best modifier is the 33%
bonus to Pierce. Using Razortail, you will only need 9 points in Pierce to reach 100% Pierce. No other belt can
come close to the damage output bonus Razortail can give you either directly (damage and Dex) or indirectly
(through Pierce). Gloom's Trap: it is a nice belt, with mana leech and other
mana bonuses, and +15 to Vitality. While there are better options available, a Gloom's Trap is certainly a decent
choice, especially if you need mana leech badly. Pay attention to the seemingly inoffensive -3 to Light Radius,
which can prove deadly in dark areas.
The two last exceptional unique belts, Snowclash and Thundergod's
Vigor, don't bring a lot of value to a bowazon.
There is an elite belt, the Nosferatu's Coil. If it worked, Nosferatu's Coil would be
on par with Razortail for the title of best bowazon belt, with IAS, leech, and a good Str bonus (useful if you plan
your gear early in your career). But Nosferatu's Coil features the infamous Slow Target, which is bugged and causes
desynch. You may want to use it, but take care, and above everything warn your partners that you use a Slow Target item.
I tend to prefer rare boots with Faster Run and resistances on bowazons. Still, some of the unique
boots can bring good value. In normal unique boots, I would recommend Gorefoot for the small mana leech bonus,
and Treads of Cthon for the incredible endurance they give. Both of those boots are strictly beginner's gear,
though.
Exceptional unique boots have some interesting properties of which a bowazon can gain much.
Infernostride: those boots provide some decent fire-related
mods: a nice resistance and a fine amount of fire damage. Not much else, though. Waterwalk: those are much better, mostly for their large Dex
and Life bonuses. Still not enough to convince me of dropping good rare boots, but YMMV. Silkweave: spellcaster boots. Can be useful to elementalists
for the mana boost, but not very exciting for a generic bowazon. War Traveler: now, we are talking (again). While the War
Traveler are better known for their large MF bonus, the incredible property on them is their 15-25 damage bonus. When
modified by Dex and other factors (Critical Strike, friendly damage aura...), War Traveler can add 100 points or
even more to your damage output. Definitely powerful. Gore Riders: an interesting pair of boots for their damage
boosting properties (Crushing Blow, Open Wounds, Deadly Strike), the Gore Riders can't hold the comparison to
the War Traveler for a bowazon (mostly because Crushing Blow is nerfed on bows).
While rare or crafted jewelry has a lot to offer to a bowazon (leech, resistances, skills),
there are some nice unique amulets and rings that offer some excellent options to a bowazon (and modifiers
they can't find anywhere else). More often than not, a bowazon will end with a mix of unique and rare/crafted
jewelry.
Together with the weapon and belt slots, the amulet slot is perhaps where unique items are the
way to go for a bowazon. While excellent rare and crafted amulets exist, most mainstream bowazon builds use one
of the unique amulets as a cornerstone. We can throw out the Nokozan's Relic (useless
garbage), Mahim-Oak Curio (not even good twink gear), the Rising
Sun and the Mara's Kaleidoscope (not very useful to a bowazon).
The Eye of Etlitch: back in CD2, the Eye of Etlitch (EoE)
was the bowazon amulet, except in case of particularly excellent rares. The best mods
on the EoE are not the Life leech and skill bonus (although they are nice), but the hidden Cold duration. Nowadays,
cold damage charms are an excellent way to get some cold duration, so the EoE is a bit less useful. Extreme
Frostmaiden builds still sport it proudly, though. Saracen's Chance: while the 1.09 version does not bring
a lot of value to a bowazon (nice stats and resists bonus, but nothing else), we will mention the 1.08 version,
probably the best amulet an amazon could want with bonuses to Str and Dex, 10% to all resistances (the 1.09
version is better in this regard), and a 3% chance to cast level 5 Amplify Damage on attack, which is simply
devastating. The Cat's Eye: an amulet made for bowazons, with its
run/walk, Dexterity, and above everything IAS bonus. PvP amazons as well as speedazons often use it. Crescent Moon: another excellent amulet, mostly for its
huge mana leech and decent life leech properties (dual leech). The other bonuses are not excellent for a bowazon,
though. Try to find your leech elsewhere before using it. Atma's Scarab: the only interest (but a big one) that
the Scarab has for a bowazon is the chance to cast Amplify Damage. If you don't have a 1.08 Saracen's Chance and
need Amp Damage, Atma's Scarab is the only choice. Highlord's Wrath: an excellent amulet (mostly for its IAS
property), the Highlord's Wrath brings some good properties to your bowazon, like a small skill bonus, and
especially scaling Deadly Strike. Depending on your build, Cat's Eye may still be a better choice.
Rings are a curiosity slot, in that they often are less useful than good rare/crafted rings.
Blizzard did a good balance job on unique rings, with most of them having some very desirable and distinctive
properties balanced by important holes in the package they furnish.
Nagelring: useful to MFers and not much else. Even then,
you may prefer a rare ring with some MF (probably less than on the Nagelring) and other good properties. Manald Heal: the only ring with mana leech in LoD. This
makes it a good choice for people needing lots of mana leech. The other properties are not very useful, though. The Stone of Jordan (SoJ): the "currency" of Battle.net,
the SoJ is useless to bowazons, except perhaps to elemental specialists who could use its mana and skill bonuses. Dwarf Star: a defensive ring with Fire absorb, MDR and a
nice life bonus, the Dwarf Star is not that useful to a bowazon (except perhaps in HC). Still a ring to have in
stash for fire-heavy situations. Raven Frost: the best unique ring for a bowazon, the Raven
Frost's two most important points are Cannot be Frozen and a large bonus to Dex (although the other properties
are interesting too). If you don't have Cannot be Frozen elsewhere on your equipment, then acquiring a Raven Frost
is highly recommended! Raven Frost also features cold damage, with a nice cold duration (4 seconds) and a very large
boost to your Attack Rating. Bul-Kathos' Wedding Band: a very overpriced item, the
Wedding Band is not that useful. It has a nice life and a skill bonus, but the life leech on it is very low,
and the stamina bonus is pitiful. Use it as trading bait.
Runewords were one of the best ideas, and perhaps the biggest disappointment in LoD. The idea
behind runewords is excellent: take a socketed item (a basic one, magical socketed items do not work with
runewords), socket it with the correct runes in the correct order, and you get an item with not only the
properties of the runes, but also a specific name and additional properties. Sadly, this excellent idea
mostly failed for a variety of reasons:
Lack of runewords: as of now (1.09), there are a pitiful 24 different
runewords enabled, while we were promised around 170. Blizzard promised more runewords would be made available
over time (first for Realms only, and later through patches for Single player mode). As of now, they lied. Quality of the runewords: there are very few runewords offering a good
quality/price ratio (and even more so for a bowazon, more on this in a moment). Most of the 24 existing runewords
are pitiful when compared to existing uniques, and most of the rest require insanely hard to find runes. Rarity of runes: what were they thinking? There are 33 different runes,
and many players will never see one of the 10 last ones. The system used for rune drops makes many of them insanely
hard to find. As such, most players can only drool when reading the powerful runewords descriptions. No in-game help for runewords: I said earlier that Blizzard lied about
new runewords. This may be false, and it is a possibility that Blizzard implemented all of the missing runewords a
long time ago. But since there is no way to get any scrap of information in the game about runewords (except
for Ancient's Pledge, the reward for the second quest in Act 5), they may as well not exist. Considering the
insane rarity of most runes, and the incredible amount of existing combinations (number of sockets, item type,
order of the runes) for socketing items, even the most daring players stopped their experiments on runewords a
long time ago.
After this small rant, we can go on with the actual runewords that could be useful for a bowazon. This will be quick.
:(
First, the bow. There are only 3 runewords usable in bows.
While Melody (Shael+Ko+Nef) isn't bad with its damage versus undead and large skill
bonuses, it isn't great either, mostly because the enhanced damage is so low (only 50%).
Zephyr (Ort+Eth) has even less enhanced damage, but is a good twinking weapon with its decent lightning
damage, IAS and even faster run/walk. Still not a great weapon by any stretch of imagination, though.
The last runeword for bows, Silence (Dol+Eld+Hel+Ist+Tir+Vex) is actually
completely godly (large enhanced damage and mana leech, skill bonus, IAS, and even an insane 75% to all
resistances, only to mention some of its bonuses). The only problems with Silence are that it requires a
6 socket weapon (meaning only the slowest bows can get socketed with it), and that the Blind Target attribute
can wreak havoc in party play, mostly with Necromancers who have to constantly recast their own curses. The
bow with which Silence would really shine, the Grand Matron Bow, can as of now only get 5 sockets. The jury
is still out on whether this is a bug or a feature.
On to helms: all helm runewords, Lore (Ort+Sol), Nadir
(Nef+Tir), and Radiance (Nef+Sol+Ith) are useless to a bowazon (Nadir being in fact
completely useless for all characters). Lore can have some uses for twinking, mostly because of the large
Lightning resistance.
Where runewords provide the best value to a bowazon is on the armor slot. There are only four armor
runewords existing, but most of those are pretty useful to certain bowazons.
Stealth (Tal+Eth) is not very good to a bowazon, although it can be a decent
twinking armor with a small dexterity bonus and a nice run/walk bonus. Stealth is better suited for spellcasters,
though.
Smoke (Nef+Lum) has an incredible defensive power with its 50% to all resistances. The
other modifiers are less useful to a bowazon, which typically doesn't require a high defense. Still a great armor, on
par with many uniques.
Wealth (Lem+Ko+Tir) is an excellent armor for MFers. Between 100% MF and 300% Extra
Gold, it is easy to see where the name came from. Wealth even has a little bonus of +10 to Dexterity, always nice
for a bowazon.
Lionheart (Hel+Lum+Fal): the Lionheart runeword is
really TEH BESTO!. Simply put, the overall
offensive (Dex bonus, Str bonus (more Dex) and enhanced damage) and defensive (30% to all resistances and
large life bonus) package of Lionheart can't be matched by any other armor. The only cases where I would see
the use of any other set of armor for a bowazon would be an elemental attacks specialist (needing a skill boost),
a MFer (Wealth would be better in this case), or a speedazon (needing IAS on her armor). Except for those specific
cases, Lionheart is the best amazon armor you could think of.
Sets are good. Or rather, they should have been good, and only some of them are useful. In
this section, we will look at which sets a bowazon can use. This includes both a few full sets, and several partial
sets combinations. In LoD, sets give special bonuses when you have at least two items, and continue adding bonuses
as you add more pieces. The Classic D2 sets are even better for this, in that individual pieces get additional
bonuses when you add more items. There are 3 sets in the game that use a bow (Arctic Gear, Vidala's Rig, M'avina's
Battle Hymn), and 3 which don't require any weapon or shield (Iratha's Finery, Cow King's Leathers,
The Disciple). In addition to this, the combinations for partial set items are limitless.
The Arctic Gear is an excellent early-game set. It features a
very low required level of 3 (although the Str and Dex requirement make it very unlikely that you will
use it so early), tons of useful modifiers (life, resistances, IAS, Str, Dex), and enough cold damage to
carry you without problems to a point where you will be able to switch to one of the earliest exceptional
unique bows. Except if you are into variant playing, the Arctic Gear is not an end-game rig, though.
While Vidala's Rig is far from being a bad set, it fails badly in the damage
department (although it has a little amount of elemental damage). It features some resistances, good Dex
and Str bonuses, but its main selling points are the Piercing and Freezing modifiers that come as a full
set bonus. At level 14 (when you can equip the full set), those are very helpful modifiers to have.
M'avina's Battle Hymn was supposed to be the flagship bowazon gear, but sadly
isn't. While the bonuses on many individual pieces are good, and while the full set bonuses are nice too,
the set has several very important flaws. The worst of those flaws is that while the set certainly looks
fast right out of the box ("Look! 40% IAS on bow!" "Look, 30% IAS on diadem!"), taking any sort of advantage
of this speed completely removes any hope of customisation (you will need to put jewels of Fervor into the
diadem and armor, and either Shael the bow or use an IAS amulet). Most of the problems of the set can be
traced to the gloves and armor (the other pieces are all decent): without IAS or leech, the gloves are that
bad, and the armor has nothing to offer to a bowazon except the passive bonus. The full set bonuses are very
nice, though, and the full set is definitely a correct end-game rig. But it is very easy to complete an equivalent
setup for a fraction of the price using exceptional unique items and rare items.
Iratha's Finery (required level 15) is definitely a good set. For just
the 4 equipment slots it uses (helm, gloves, amulet and belt), no other combination in the game can give such
incredible resist bonuses, with 65% to all resistances and +10% to maximum resistances. The set also offers
nice additional bonuses to a bowazon: 20% IAS, 20% Fast Run/Walk, +5 to minimum damage, and a nice 25 to
Dexterity. The only problem with the Finery is that it removes the amulet, helm and belt slots, making it
hard for a bowazon to gather enough mana leech at the end of the game. Still, this set is an excellent
option (especially for HC) easily overlooked.
The Disciple (required level 65) is an excellent all-around set, usable by
all classes. With excellent resistances, a large skill bonus, and other goodies (stats bonuses for example),
the strength of the Disciple is that it can be used by absolutely any class or build. For bowazons, the set
is a good option, especially since it includes the Laying of Hands Bramble Mitts.
Those gloves are perhaps the best ready-made option for a bowazon, thanks to their IAS bonus and
incredible 350% Damage to demons. The other pieces are somewhat useful, but don't bother to use them
unless you want to go for the full set bonus. While it blocks the amulet slot, the Disciple leaves the
helm slot free, allowing for an easy inclusion of mana leech to your build (since 7 or 8% mana leech
circlets are easy to come by).
The Cow King's Leathers is a sort of joke set by Blizzard (its pieces can
only be collected in the cow level), but that doesn't mean it is not useful to a bowazon. This set gives
a sizable amount of Magic Find and some Gold Find (always good for item junkies), some resistances and Dexterity,
and above everything a very cool 30% IAS as a part of the full set bonus. What is even better is that it doesn't take
any crucial item slot for a bowazon (except perhaps the helm), meaning it can easily be used.
Death's Hand (gloves) + Death's Guard (belt):
an impressive combination for a bowazon, both early on and later in the game. For just two items, you get 30% IAS,
8% Life Leech, 15% to all resistances (more for poison), and Cannot be Frozen. The only drawback is that you will
be stuck with a 2 rows belt. A very effective combination.
Sigon's Gage (gloves) + any other item (generally belt or boots): you just can't
argue with 30% IAS and 10% Life Leech.
Tal Rasha's Guardianship (armor) + Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest
(helm) + Tal Rasha's Fine-spun Cloth (belt). Perhaps the best all-around option
for Magic Find characters. The Crest (huge dual leech, prismatic, large bonus to life and mana) is one of
the best helms in the game (using what I call "balance by style", as for all its effectiveness it is really
ugly on a bowazon), the armor is impressive with its large MF bonus and huge resistances, and the belt is
not lost on a bowazon with its 20 added points to Dexterity. As a partial set bonus, you get replenish life
(useless), but another 65% to Magic Find! Supposing you socket 2 perfect topazes in the helm and armor, you
get 211-216% MF with just those 3 slots, along with dual leech, huge resistances, and other excellent bonuses.
Best MF combo in the game for a fighter class, but hard to make because the armor is very rare and expensive.
As far as individual items are concerned, Wilhelm's Pride battle belt is good for
dual leech, while Sander's Taboo (gloves) and Sander's Riprap
(boots) are also decent mid-life items (the gloves for IAS and Life, the boots for very good run/walk and stats
bonuses). With their excellent run/walk and nice resistances, the Natalya's Soul boots
are also a popular choice.
Crafting is one of those addictive features of LoD, just like cubing items or Magic Find. There
are two different views about crafting: you can consider crafted items as freebie rares, or you can use very
specific recipes, hoping for a combination of fixed and random modifiers that will give you an unsurpassed item.
Crafting recipes are done by putting into your Horadric Cube a specific kind of magical item (its exceptional
and elite versions work too), a specific perfect gem and rune, and a random magical jewel. Crafted items get
specific properties (depending on the recipe used), and random modifiers, chosen amongst the available rare
modifiers (magic-only affixes can't spawn on crafted items).
As a rule of thumb, you should always craft with your higher level character, using base items (the rune,
gem and jewel don't matter) found as far into the game as possible (more tuning of crafting level is possible
to get more chance at specific affixes, but this is out of the scope of this guide). This ensures you will get
the largest possible affixes selection. A little warning, though: crafted items get a 22 level requirement malus,
because of the fixed modifiers. As such, it is very easy to craft godly but about impossible to use items (like
all those required level 89 +2 to skills amulets).
Hitpower gloves (magical Chain Gloves, Ort rune, sapphire) are perhaps the most
popular craft for bowazons. This is because they have Knockback as a fixed modifier. For the additional
properties, look for IAS, leech, skill bonuses... Everything you could want on rare gloves.
About all Blood crafted item (except shield and weapon, of course) can be
useful to a bowazon, because of their inner Life Leech property. Blood Gloves
(magical Heavy Gloves, Nef rune, ruby) are excellent, because a good pair could potentially have up to 6% Life
Leech (crafted bonus and rare modifier). Blood Amulets (magical amulet, Amn rune,
ruby) are also a safe bet, as dual-leech prismatic amulets are not unheard of. Lastly, Blood
Rings (magical ring, Sol rune, ruby) are impressive if you get more life leech as a random modifier (you
could be lucky and have up to 11% Life leech on your ring). Blood Boots (magical Light
Plated boots, Eth rune, ruby) are easy to make, and can give you a tiny amount of Life leech (not enough on its
own, but certainly a welcome addition), as well as all the goodies often found on rare boots (excellent
resistances, fast run/walk...).
The Caster and Safety families of crafting recipe
are generally less useful to bowazons.
After reading the previous sections, you should be able to see if a particular piece of
equipment is good or not to a bowazon. But depending on your playing habits, taste for Magic Find, luck, and
packratish behavior, you may have a large selection of gear to choose from when preparing your character.
No-twink playing is easier for those kinds of decisions, since when you find a new item you just have to
evaluate it against your current equipment. Where no-twink play is much, much harder is about throwing away
equipment when your stash is full...
So you need damage, leech, perhaps some IAS, and nothing else, right? Wrong. While the laziest
bowazons could get away with this in the cow level (where resistances are not a concern, and the outdoor
environment gives bowazons a real edge), such a selection of gear is bound to have you bite the dust in about
any other area.
Your main balance decision will be survival versus damage. While at first it may look as if more damage =
faster dropping enemies = better survival, the situation is in fact a bit more complicated. Lag, bad play
decisions, bad luck (in the form of boss properties) can take a toll quickly, and whether you play HC (in
which case death is definitive) or SC at high levels (in which case dying can mean hours of leveling down
the drain), thinking a bit about survival is important.
As far as damage is concerned, here are the possibilities to increase damage:
Use a bigger bow. This one is a given: more damage on
bow = better damage overall. Just don't forget that speed also helps a lot, and that heavier bows sometimes
require lots of Strength, meaning less Dex and thus less damage. As I said earlier, dedicate your bow slot to
damage, and don't think too much about it elsewhere. Use a faster bow or more IAS: when looking at damage over
time charts, you could be surprised at the effectiveness of IAS. For example, moving to the next IAS breakpoint
could easily mean 10 or 20% more damage over time. A full IAS rig is even more deadly, allowing speedazons with
"puny" bows to kill monsters surprisingly fast (speed has other advantages as far as survival is concerned). The
main choice for IAS comes from the speed breakpoints (see the Speedazon chapter
for more information about them).
Remember that most IAS gear comes at the price of survival gear, so careful planning is really needed here. Increase your Dexterity: another given. More Dex = more
damage. But Dex is where it is easier to balance things out. This +25 to Dex amulet may be good damage-wise, but
why not replace it with this mana leech/prismatic/skills amulet? Since the amount of Dex you can get from items is
generally not huge in regard to your base Dexterity, and since getting Life from items generally has better rewards
than getting Dex from items, I would strongly advise against always pumping Dex through items. Use secondary effects: those effects have very varying
efficiency. While Amplify Damage is the king of secondary effects, giving you such a huge boost to damage that you
should really consider using it if you can, Crushing Blow, Open Wounds and other less than stellar effects could
perfectly be ditched in favor of survival gear (one of the reasons why I don't like Gore Riders that much for
bowazons). You shouldn't remove survival gear for damage secondary effects (except Amp Damage). Elemental Damage: you will need at least one big source of
elemental damage to deal with physical immune monsters. While using the Fire Arrow bug is a possibility, don't
overlook elemental damage bows. They may become a necessity in 1.10 anyway. ;) I would advise dedicating your
second weapon slot to a high elemental damage weapon, and not worrying about elemental damage (except cold, but
this is a survival problem) elsewhere. Skill bonuses typically don't add a lot offensive-wise to a bowazon. An extra MS
arrow or 5% more damage on Strafe and Guided Arrow are nice but not godly. Extra damage on elemental arrows is
a much better reason to have skill bonuses, and of course increasing your passives generally helps your bowazon
a lot even in the offensive department (through better Critical Strike, Penetrate and Pierce). I would recommend
against completely sacrificing raw damage or speed for skills, but you could remove some survival gear for a skill
bonus if needed.
For survival, here are a few interesting possibilities:
More life: this one is a given. Since there are so many
perfectly good items with large life bonuses out there, it is very easy to use items to build up on life. Don't
overdo it, though: once you reach the safety zone against lag, pumping life further is counter-productive.
Better resistances: as a rule of thumb, I will gladly
sacrifice some damage potential for better Lightning and Fire resistances, since those elements are the most
common and most damaging in the game. I would think twice about Cold and Poison resistances, though. Use Crowd Control modifiers: perhaps the best defensive
possibility for a bowazon, crowd control modifiers are nice in that they are applied during attack. I would
chose one or two of those (generally cold duration and Knockback), and would never sacrifice them for anything,
be it other survival gear or better damage. The only thing that can replace Hitpower gloves is better Hitpower
gloves. Use IAS: yes, IAS is also useful for survival. Faster
shooting means both that you stay in place less long and can move earlier (very important for example in the
case of Strafe-lock), but also that you apply crowd control modifiers much faster! Since a bowazon rules by
controlling the pace of battle, IAS is one of the best tools you can use. Better leech: life and mana leech are the basis of a
successful physical damage build. While more leech always sounds good, don't overdo it. If you can leech
enough mana to sustain your skills (either through leeching from groups or using Guided Arrow as a mana
recovery skill), then you probably can go without more mana leech (most of your mana problems will come
from Physical Immunes anyway). For life leech, it should serve you in order to repair the little damage
done by the occasional hit. So except if you play carelessly, more than 10% Life leech is often a waste
(a bowazon has too few hit points to survive inside a crowd, no matter what amount of leech she uses). Run faster: repositioning to get the most of your
skills and avoid getting hit takes running. Hence, running faster is important. I would consider anything
over 50% FRW being a waste for PvM, though (PvP is entirely different in regard to run/walk). Don't get frozen: getting frozen is perhaps one of the
easiest way to die as a bowazon. I strongly advise in favor of wearing one piece of equipment with the "Cannot
be Frozen" modifier, even if you have to sacrifice some damage for it. Skills bonuses add a lot to your defensive potential, by
bumping your defensive passives and
your Valkyrie. The other defensive modifiers are probably not worth mentioning, and should come
as bonuses.
Above everything, don't be afraid of experimenting. The main balance consideration should be speed breakpoints,
as IAS equipment is not always easy to come by, and excellent IAS equipment (providing further damage bonus or
survival potential) is even harder to get.
Another great feature of LoD, socketing is a pleasure. But it needs to be well done. The first
quest of Act5 gives you the possibility to add sockets to existing equipment. Through this quest, unique, rare
and set items can get one socket (if they don't already have one or more), and magical items randomly get one
or two sockets (normal items get their maximum potential sockets, depending on the level of the monster who
dropped them). This means that your bowazon could socket her bow, her helm and her armor, for example. Before
doing anything, keep in mind that socketing is definitive. You can switch equipment back and forth, but you
can never get rid of a misused socket quest.
Socketing can be used to add either offense or defense to your character. When socketing your bow, you
should generally focus on offense. This can be done either through damage runes or jewels (Enhanced Damage
jewels or Ohm runes for percent-base damage, +min or + max damage jewels, Ith and Sol runes for flat damage
increase), or better speed (jewels of Fervor or Shael runes). Elemental damage socketable items (gems, some
runes, high elemental damage jewels) are of course an option, but those work just as well on other slots. An
excellent defensive option for your weapon comes in the form of better leech (Amn rune for 7% Life Leech, Vex
rune for 7% Mana leech, or a perfect skull for 4% Life and 3% Mana leech). If you don't use Hitpower gloves and
need Knockback, just stick a Nef rune in your bow and be happy (a warning, Knockback can be a nuisance to your
teammates, and Nef in a bow makes Knockback impossible to avoid, short of using FA to freeze the monsters first).
Pipe dream socket for weapon: Ruby jewel of Fervor (up to 40% Enhanced Damage, 15% IAS).
Socketing your helm and armor is a more tricky business. Depending on your current survival potential,
you may want to add offensive potential to those items. Enhanced damage jewels don't give that much of a boost to
your total damage, but min and max damage jewels are potentially interesting. Elemental damage jewels could
perfectly be considered also, and dedicated speedazons will of course want those jewels of Fervor for IAS.
But by far the best use (except in the case of going past an IAS breakpoint) of sockets in armor or helm is
defensive. A prismatic jewel or UM rune is never wasted in those slots (except if you already have maxed Hell
resists without charms, in which case I would like to see your gear). Pipe dream socket for armor/helm: Scintillating
jewel of Fervor (10 to 15% to all resistances, 15% IAS).
If neither defensive nor offensive options appeal to you, you could always add some utility power, such as
mana per kill (not that useful, but then again who am I to say this), or Magic Find.
You shouldn't waste an excellent item with a misused socket, but on the other hand you shouldn't waste an
excellent jewel or rune on an average item. Here again, think a lot. Oh, and please stop dumping Ist runes
into helms and armors. Perfect topazes exist for a reason, ok?
Charms are IMHO the best feature of LoD. Charms work by sacrificing inventory space for small
bonuses (although charms are sometimes pretty overpowered). In order to assess a charm's quality, just imagine
what would happen if your inventory was completely full of copies of this charm. The amount of customisation
you can do with charms is limitless. Here are some of the things you can do with them:
Increase your physical damage: some charms (red, fine,
sharp, of craftmanship...) add a little amount to your minimum or maximum damage. This amount is further
enhanced by your Dexterity, as well as by other damage enhancers (friendly aura, Critical Strike...). For
example, a grand charm with 10 to max damage would mean 40 more maximum damage on a bowazon with 300 Dex. Apply
this 3 times per second to several targets with a speedazon, use 5 such charms, and you get an idea of the
amount of damage those innocent-looking charms can give over time. Other charms for getting more damage are
Dexterity charms. Get elemental damage: also an interesting possibility
with charms, elemental damage can reach very nice amounts, especially for Lightning and Poison damage. Cold
damage charms have their own use, in that each cold damage charm adds one second to your total cold duration. Increase your life and mana: considering the good but
not great returns an amazon gets on Vitality points, and the atrocious returns investing in Energy means, Life
and mana charms are very popular. You can get up to 20 Life points and/or 17 mana points on a single small
charm, which is quite impressive to say the least. Run faster: small charms can give you 5% Fast Run/Walk
on them. This can stack very quickly to allow you to move at blinding speeds. Again, don't overdo it: there
is probably something better you could do with your charm space. My best use for FRW charms is when I use boots
with incredible modifiers (huge resistances mostly) but no FRW. Get resistances: a very popular use for charms, resistances
are easy to get. You could either use Shimmering charms (for their resist all properties) or just use charms with
a single resistance (and preferably another affix at the same time) to cover holes in your build. I would suggest
you keep to this second option, and not forget resistances on your main equipment, as maintaining good resistances
only or nearly only with charms is a pain. Get rich!: with Magic Find or Gold Find on charms, you can
improve your earthly D2 possessions quickly. I would recommend using those kinds of charms on dedicated MF
characters only and in large amounts, because just a few don't give that much. Improve your skills: grand charms can spawn with +1 to
a skill tree. Those which interest us are of course Fletcher's (bow skills) and Acrobat's (passive skills) charms. Depending on your build, any of those may be an excellent
way to improve your build. Elemental-heavy bowazons are of course very interested in Fletcher's charms, which
improve the damage of their elemental skills a lot.
This section is dedicated to a few dream bowazon items, including "perfect" bows and incredibly
powerful jewelry/armor. Keep in mind that trading for such godly items is not recommended, because of the very
high risk of getting dupes. This list is my personal selection and totally non-objective, of course.
Cruel (300%) Matriarchal Bow of Evisceration (+63 Max), 2
sockets with 2 Ruby Jewels of Fervor (40%ED/15% IAS), obviously a speedazon's dream with 96-289 damage and 30%
IAS. Cruel (300%) Diamond Bow of Transcendence (+20 Min), 2
sockets filled with 2 rare jewels featuring 30%ED and +18 Minimum damage, total being 208-209 damage. Windforce. Nuff said. 1.08 Saracen's Chance: best zon amulet ever. Resists,
stats boosts, and of course Amplify Damage. Rare circlet with +2 Amazon skills, 20% Prismatic, an
extra 40% Lightning Resist, 8% Mana and Life leech, 30% Fast Run/Walk. Still gambling. Socketed with a perfect
Scintillating Jewel of Fervor (15% all resistances, 15% IAS). Jeweler's (4 sockets) Wire Fleece (or lighter armor if you prefer)
of the Whale (+100 Life), filled with 4 perfect Scintillating jewels of Fervor. 60% all resists, 60%
IAS, +100 Life. Where do I sign up?
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Corwin v1.2, 4/15/03
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Bowazon Guide cont'd:
Part 1 2
3 4 5 6
7
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