THE BASIN

This section will be dedicated to some generic information on playing the game. As I said, this is not a guide to power-acting and then leeching in cows. The first part will include a small walkthrough, with some specific tips on various encounters and quests. After this, we will try to analyze some of the good leveling spots for bowazons in various difficulty levels. We will go on with a short treaty on Magic Find with a bowazon (where to MF, and what to sacrifice for it), and we will end with a lengthy part about party playing.

Walkthrough

This walkthrough will not include much in term of solving quests. The quests are all very easily done, because they are very straightforward. If you are really stuck, try to look at GameFAQS for tips.

If you are playing single player and have difficulties leveling, a great way to increase your experience is by use of the "players X" command. Simply press Enter while in the game and type "players X" (with X an integer between 1 and 8), then Enter again. Any new monster appearing will now have more Hit Points and give more Experience (like if you were in a game with X players). Before hard boss fights, simply turn the command off by typing "players 1".

Normal Difficulty

Anyone can finish Normal Difficulty (well, in SoftCore anyway), with absolutely any skills of choice. The only "difficulty" of Normal is if you have already planned your end-game skills, and want to save skill points (this is less true for a bowazon, because many of her low and mid-level skills are very useful and should receive some points, like CS, Multishot...). Anyway, Normal Diff can be done without using any skill at all if you feel like it.

You won't encounter many problems in Normal difficulty, mostly because very, very few (if any) enemies have immunities. Your main enemy will be your mana pool, because your damage will probably be too low to allow you constant use of your skills with mana leech.

Act 1 Normal is your training ground. After building a few characters, you will really want to rush through it, because it is so simple. In MultiPlayer games, you can easily level up to 18 (and thus get access to Ice Arrow) by doing several times the catacombs levels. While you won't find many good items in A1, your best bet as far as survival is concerned is to find a socketable Hunter's Bow and put some chipped gems in it (sapphires and topazes work best) for elemental damage. Of course, if you have access to external gear (this is referred to as "twinking"), then you may very well have much better options available, like a full Arctic's Gear set (this set will allow you to finish Normal Difficulty without looking back). In Single Player, you should be around level 14 when killing Andariel.

Act 2 Normal introduces various types of new threats, and large amounts of unleechable monsters, like the skeletons. Pay attention to those. If a mummy is around a pack of the undead, it can constantly resurrect them (this is the case for the first quest boss, Radament). Against those enemies, use Ice Arrow, which will freeze and shatter any critter. If you don't have Ice Arrow for Radament, level a bit in the sewers. At the end of Act 2, you will meet Duriel. Probably without any summons yet (although you may have a Decoy if you leveled a lot, in which case Duriel will be very easy), this will be a hard fight: Duriel has a terrible Holy Freeze aura, which slows you down to a crawl, there is very little room to avoid him, and he has a very fast and very damaging Charge attack. Your best bet is to hide behind your mercenary, and to feed him potions often, while attacking Duriel with GA or Ice Arrow (you will want to use those auto-hit skills). In Act2, you will also discover the Horadric Cube. Start cubing your gems to save stash space, and also make some rejuvenation potions which will help you a lot against Duriel. As far as gear is concerned, if you have enough gems you can build a better socketable bow, this time with normal gems.

Act 3 Normal is a pain. Actually, Act3 is a pain in all difficulties. I strongly advise you to do a straight run through the entire jungle section of A3, only stopping to get the various parts of Khalim. Once you get to level 24 and get Decoy (if you haven't already), things get a lot better for you, as you can use your Decoy to draw away some of the Flayer's attention. As far as very dangerous (lethal) encounters are concerned, you will have mainly three: one in the Ruined Temples, with Battlemaid Sarina (those temples are often known as "Stair Traps" because monsters can wait for you at the stairs and kill you while the level loads); the second one, a very nasty battle, takes place in Travincal with the Kurast Council. The corrupted Zakarum Priests are formidable foes for a young bowazon. Use every trick in your arsenal (again, Decoy rules here) to keep them away from you, and don't engage them without having cleared the entire map so you can fall back without awakening more monsters. The last hard part is the entire Durance of Hate with its crowd of exploding Dolls. Keep those away from you! If you invested mostly in Str and Dex until now, then those Dolls can perhaps kill you in one hit if they die near you. The third map of Durance is home to more Council members (including the infamous Bremm Sparkfist), so take care there too. Mephisto isn't too hard to beat if you use GA from far away on him.

Act 4 Normal is probably the hardest act overall in the game. On the other hand, you will probably gain access (if you haven't somewhere in A3) to the Freezing Arrow, Valkyrie and Pierce skills, three skills that will turn you into a grown-up bowazon. I strongly urge you to save some skill points before level 30, so you can invest in all those skills at the same time. There are no really specific tactics to doing well in A4: advance slowly, scout with your Decoy and with some skills like GA and Multishot, and always have some place to fall back. Diablo is a very annoying boss, as he has a high chance to block any incoming physical attack. If your resists are good, you should be able to kill him in the end, provided you avoid his Lightning Breath and his Flame attack.

Act 5 Normal is mostly a walk in the park. Most enemies (except those annoying Minotaur packs, which can be dealt with using Decoy and Valkyrie) don't move much, don't do much damage, and die easily. There are 3 hard parts in A5: the first one is the cheesy Nhilathak. He's a necromancer able to summon enemies and who uses one of the most powerful necromancer spells: Corpse Explosion. In order to deal with him easily, deprive him of ammunitions by killing his summoned monsters with either FA or Ice Arrow (thus shattering the corpses). The second hard encounter is with the three Barbarians on the Arreat Summit. Here again, you will want to always have a Valkyrie engaging them, a Decoy between them and you, and you will always be on the move. If you manage to do this, shooting GAs from a good distance should get them in the end (warning, don't forget they regain all their energy if you leave the Arreat's Summit or if you die). The last challenge is the Throne of Destruction, and especially the last wave of Baal's Minions. While those minions are not very difficult (FA tends to dispatch them very easily), the apparition of Lister and his pack takes part after a very long loading time. Unless you have a very fast computer, I strongly advise taking your distance before Lister appears. Baal himself is not very difficult if you deal with him from behind the columns. Pay attention to both his orange attack (the infamous "Anti-Minions Spray") and his Blue Wave, which will chill you and slow you down (not to mention a decent amount of damage).

Congratulations, you are now a Slayer! Before proceeding to Nightmare difficulty, you may want to redo some of the most experience-rewarding areas in A5, to prepare you for what is coming.

Nightmare Difficulty (NM)

I will not detail each act, but rather the new challenges you will meet in this difficulty.

Bosses now get a second random attribute (or a first one in case of specific bosses): this can make for nasty combinations, such as Multishot/Lightning Enchanted, Lightning Enchanted/Cold Enchanted, Might Aura/Curse... Generally speaking, you should want to check monsters' abilities before engaging them, and stay at a safe distance from bosses before shooting. Some of the most powerful bosses can kill your Valk pretty quickly, before rushing at you.
Your leech is halved in Nightmare. This mean skills you took for granted in Normal can now drain your mana very quickly. Increasing your damage to break even on leech will be one of your top priorities in NM.
You will encounter your first batches of Immune Monsters. Some specific monsters also have immunities (like Duriel, who is now Cold Immune). But since not many (if any) monsters have two immunities, you are generally ok if you use both a physical and an elemental attack.
Your resists are hit hard (-30%). Combined with the lack of a shield, this means that you may start having negative resists in Nightmare. And in Nightmare, monsters start having pretty powerful elemental attacks of their own.

Generally speaking, once you manage to break even on leech and find some better resists, NM difficulty is not that difficult.

Hell Difficulty (H)

Welcome to the real fighting ground of D2. Unless you play a very specific variant, Normal is a walk in the park. Unless you play fully no-twink or your luck sucks very badly, Nightmare is very doable. But in Hell, if you really play through the game (as opposed to: leeching your way up to the Cow Level), you will suffer a lot. Like for Nightmare, I will simply detail what you can expect in Hell mode, and how to counter it.

The biggest change is that all monsters get a free 50% Physical Resistance. This has two very annoying side-effects: first, your leech is again halved (because you do half the listed damage), meaning breaking even on expensive skills is now really, really hard. Second, all Stone Skin bosses are now Physical Immune.
Bosses now get 2 extra random attributes. In Hell, this can translate into a wealth of nasty combos, as well as into many, many dual Immune bosses, which means that you will have to find yourself a high elemental damage bow in addition to your physical damage and to your likely abuse of the Fire Arrow bug/feature.
Generally speaking, monsters hit a lot harder. By now, you should already master the various crowd-control techniques available to a bowazon, so this should not be a big problem, though.
Your resists hurt again. This time, you get -100% from your base resists. Lacking a shield, only bowazons with the best equipment can max their resists in Hell. Since you will probably have to make some choices as far as resists are concerned, I would advise keeping focused on Lightning and Fire resistances.

Some specific tips for Hell:

Hell Council: a very hard fight for a bowazon: all 3 Boss council members have 2 immunities, and they sport a very large variety of nasty mods (fighting against Fanaticism and Might Enchanted Council members while cursed isn't unheard of). As usual, fully clear Travincal before taking them, and try to isolate them. Don't forget they can heal themselves, so never let one alone until he's dead. If you really can't do it, recreate a game to change their mods (IIRC, people playing SP should first create a game in another difficulty). Don't forget that you only have to kill one to get the last part of Khalim's Will, so you can kill one and park the other two.
Hell Diablo: there is a small trick to avoid his LBOD (Lightning Breath of Death) in Hell difficulty: you can try to tank him, as his LBOD will fly just behind you. Of course, this requires tons of life leech and a good amount of life to survive him at point blank range.
Hell Ancients: those guys can be a real pain. If you are playing on the Realms, try to find some friends or random strangers to help you. A balanced party (including tanks (barbarians or druids), ranged fighters like yourself, and elemental attackers (sorceresses, assassins...), backed-up by a summoner necromancer) can deal with them easily. If you are alone, then you will need luck on the attributes they draw (if they are really impossible to beat, then cast a TP, it will reset their health and attributes). Before the fight, try to gather as many Full Rejuvenation potions as you can, and leave them on the Arreat's Summit's ground. This way, if you drink potions during the fight, you can quickly click on the extra potions and refill your belt. Except for that, it's the same basic technique: always have a Decoy and a Valk up, and never stay at the same place for 2 seconds.
Hell Nhilathak: welcome to the cheesiest place in the game. Hell Nhilathak does suck. There is no absolutely guaranteed technique against his level 30+ Corpse Explosion, as his minions are Cold Immunes, meaning you can't even deprive him from corpses using FA. Try to kill him in a solo game, because more players in game means more damage from his CE. Unless you have very high life and very high Fire resistance, his CE should be able to 1-hit-kill you anyway. The best tactic I've found against this guy is to kill some monsters from very far away, then summon a Decoy as far as possible in his general direction. He will probably blow away the Decoy, thus wasting a corpse. Rinse and repeat until you disposed from all corpses.

Leveling your bowazon

Ah, the mandatory cheesy leveling section. :). First, why do mindless leveling? Well, there is a large variety of reasons:

You could be leveling for the sake of it, ultimately trying to reach level 99 (or whatever limit you want for yourself). For many players, this is a perfectly legit goal.
You could want to use some specific piece of equipment. LoD is full of very-high level gear (like those Rlvl 89 +2 skills crafted amulets, or some of the Elite uniques).
You could get trashed badly by some monsters, and want to improve your stats and skills before taking them. If you are alone and without extremely good gear, entering Nightmare before level 35-40 and Hell before level 65-70 is not recommended.
All of the above. :)

So you want to level. A lot. Depending on the difficulty you are in, there are a few places that offer extremely high experience/risk ratio. Remember that you want to avoid risk when leveling, because dying in Nightmare and Hell results in lost experience. I will assume that you want to actually contribute to the leveling effort, and not stay in a corner watching TV while your team mates are doing all the work.

A quick note: please party. The CD2 days of solo-8 for maximum experience are now over, as you will get a nice experience bonus if you party. While solo-8 still gives more experience per monster, you will probably finish leveling faster if you really party (that is unless 5 out of 8 players are just leeching).

Arcane Sanctuary: in Normal and Nightmare, this is a perfect leveling place. The straight ways make it very easy to build artificial chokepoints for monsters (with a merc, Valk, Decoy, or a friendly tank). In Hell, this area is less bowazon-friendly, because of the numerous Physical Immunes.
Canyon of Magi: an old Javazon leveling area, the Canyon of Magi can still be an interesting leveling place, because there are never any bosses there.
Kurast: while the jungle and its awful Flayers is a terrible place to level, the various Kurast areas are very nice for a bowazon (well, there are those Physical Immune mosquitoes, but they have low life and as such fall quickly to elemental attacks). As a bonus, you will usually get some good loot. Avoid the sewers, full of dangerous unleechable monsters.
The Bloody Foothills: Or the Boring Foothills. An excellent leveling place for everyone in Normal and Nightmare (this is probably the highest reward/risk area of the game, more of a slaughterhouse), the BF in Hell are not bowazon-friendly because of many Physical Immunes, meaning you will probably end up leeching Exp from sorcs.
The Halls of Pain: a very nice leveling area, with easy to kill monsters and no random bosses. The low monster density makes it hard to level very quickly there, though, but at least it's safe. HC players love Halls!
The Glacial Trail: also has a good experience/risk ratio, because there are no minotaurs there.
The Worldstone Keep: provided you can avoid those dangerous exploding Spawns (Decoy rules for this), you should do fine there.
The Secret Cow Level: The best leveling place for a bowazon. While cows can be dangerous, there is a lot of room to move around in the Moo Moo Farm, and the very large herds of bovines mean multi-target skills (MS, FA) can be used to their fullest extent. The Cow Level is easily the best experience/time level.

MFing with your bowazon

GIVE ITAMZ AMA! As a matter or fact, bowazons aren't the best characters for Magic Finding (the act of slapping tons of "Extra Chance to get Magical Items" items on a character, and repeatedly cleaning the same areas over and over, hoping to hit the jackpot). Where they shine is against crowds of monsters, and generally not against single dangerous monsters (like act bosses, the preferred target of MFers). Which means that your best bet for MFing with your bowazon is against normal monsters. The Secret Cow Level is a nice place for MFing (as you really don't need much resists there), but if you play in a party, there is a very high probability that the stuff that drops will end up in someone's else pockets. Play with friends to avoid this.

As with everything else, MFing with a bowazon is a matter of balance. You want to have a lot of MF, true, but you also don't want to die too often. Which means paying attention to your life and resistance totals. Since MFing has some very, very steep diminishing returns, anything over 400%MF is probably something of a waste if it means giving up valuable killing or survival gear. What does matter is the number of good items you get over time. If you have to give up 50% of your killing speed in order to have an effective increase of your MF (after diminishing returns) of 10%, then you are probably better off without the extra MF.

Now, up to some very interesting bowazon MF items:

Tal's Combo: Tal Rasha's Armor, Mask ("The Fugly"), and Belt. This is by far the best combo you could hope for with a bowazon, and was already discussed in the Sets section. Quick reminder: with 2 Topazes in Fugly and Armor, you get 211-216%MF, +20 Dex, large life and resistances bonuses, 10% Dual Leech, for just 3 item slots. Sign me up.
Tal's Combo #2: Tal Rasha's armor, belt, amulet, and Stealskull. Depending on your IAS needs, this combo may be more useful for you than the previous one. You get less resists (except for lightning, which is the most important resist anyway), you lose some life and some leech, but you come out ahead in the MF department and this 10% extra IAS may be enough for you to jump to the next breakpoint. YMMV, as usual.
Goldwrap, Stealskull: those items (unique Heavy Belt, unique Casque) share something, they both feature both a good amount of MF and some IAS. If you want to MF with a bowazon and don't have access to Tal's set, then those items are a very good choice if you need to reach a specific IAS breakpoint. Stealskull has the added bonus of 5% dual-leech.
Charms: Charms allow you to get some nice MF (up to 7% per square of inventory), without sacrificing your survival gear.
Wealth Runeword: Lem+Ko+Tir. While this armor doesn't offer much to a bowazon, it has 100% MF as well as 300% Gold Find, meaning it's an excellent Get Rich Quick scheme. I sometimes put on a Wealth armor when entering the cow level, since my armor slots are often dedicated to resists, which are not really needed in the Moo Moo Farm.
Silence Bow: good damage, mana leech, 75% resist all, and 30% MF. The interesting point of a Silence weapon when MFing is that you get your resists pretty well set-up with just this weapon, allowing you to dedicate other equipment slots to pure MF.
M'avina's Battle Hymn: features 100%MF. The problem is that the set's weaknesses (lack of leech and resists, mostly) are somewhat hard to cover, so you may end up with just those 100%MF if you want to build a viable char around the set. YMMV, of course.
War Travelers: already some of the best bowazon boots available (for the large damage bonus mostly), and they feature some good MF. What else could you want? Oh, yes, resists.
GoldStrike Arch: while this bow doesn't have any MF per se, it is very interesting for the MF bowazon. The large damage bonus to Demons and the Undead means that you will kill those annoying act bosses very quickly. The incredible speed also frees up some equipment slots (slap a Shael in it, a Goldwrap and a Stealskull, and you are at 9/3 already, with some decent MF).
Buriza-do-Kyanon: the Tuna Cannon is a mighty weapon for MFers, since it does very well on its own (nearly no additional IAS required), features uber-damage, and works so well with GA.
Laying of Hands: 20% IAS, 50% Fire resist, 350%ED against Demons? Mephisto, here I come! Those gloves pack so many features in one equipment slot that they are very hard to beat for the MFing bowazon. Hint: Chance Guards suck badly when compared to those.

Of the monsters to kill:

As said earlier, cows are a very valid target for MFing. Hell Cows can drop nearly any item in the game (except for Immortal King's Armor, some Griswold's set items, Bul-Kathos Mythical Sword, and Stormspire). Although the chance for a given cow to drop an uber-item is very, very low, their sheer number should give you something in the end.
Runs in the various parts of A5 generally turn out to be very profitable. Some super-unique monsters in A5 (Thresh Socket, Pindleskin, Frozenstein, Snapchip Shatter...) are known to be able to drop some of the rarest items in the game.
Mephisto in Hell is not advised for bowazons, as the risk of running into deadly explosive dolls is too high. Leave this one to barbarians and sorceresses, trust me.
A very popular and rewarding boss-only item run is the famous "3 SU run". Start in A5, take the Frigid Highlands Waypoint. Go North and kill Eldritch the Rectifier, then South for Shenk the Overseer. Once both are dealt with, go back to Harrogath, enter the Red Portal near Anya (to close the Red Portal, you need to kill Nhilathak and get the Halls of Pain WP, the portal stays open if you do only one or none of those), and slay Pindleskin. Pindleskin can drop any item in the game, making him a very popular target (and his predictability makes him a very abused monster by the low-life users of the Pindlebot cheat, an automated Pindleskin-runs program).
Baal in Hell can drop nearly all items (except those elusive Griswold's Legacy pieces and a few other trinkets), and is quite doable for a bowazon (because FA works very well against his various waves of minions). While Baal runs can be a bit longish, they are quite profitable if you are a bit lucky.

Thus ends our little MFing session.

Party playing

Multi-Player is probably what makes LoD such a great game. Between the heinous Player Killers, the "Jokeonomy" (ruined by hacks, bots, and Ebay), the bragging spoiled brats encountered in every public game, leechers, beggars, and generally inept ALL-CAPS players, Battle.net is sooo much fun! Seriously, if you find a good group of players with whom you can play private games, then you don't get many better games than D2 in Multiplayer. While the various character classes are not very well balanced (I would like to apply for the "Understatement of the Year Award" with this one), the variety of party tricks and skill interactions is simply amazing.

In this section, we will discover how a bowazon can help other classes, and in which ways those can help you.

Partying with other Amazons

Other bowazons are easy to party with. Depending on the styles, the main advantage offered by having several bowazons party together is incredibly concentrated firepower. Not much can stand in the way of several bowazons. The obvious problem is that a bowazon party will often be stopped dead in its tracks by the first nasty PI boss.

Javazons come in two breeds mostly. Ranger Javazons are, like bowazons, adept at ranged mass-destruction (using Lightning Fury mostly). When partied with Javazons, don't use FA too much, as they rely on getting huge herds of monsters together to get the most out of LF. Tanking Javazons can be thought of as "Clever Valks". :) They don't deal a huge amount of damage, but they are among the best tanking characters in the game. As with any tank, they will draw attention to themselves, letting you deal loads of ranged damage with little threat to yourself. Help them stay alive with FA.

Spearazons are a very special character subclass. Lacking a shield, they don't have the huge tanking potential of Javazons, and exclusively rely on their aptitude to leech large amounts of life to survive. FA is key to helping a spearazon. Try to avoid large volleys of MS when there is a spearazon in front of you, because it may draw too many monsters for her to handle.

Partying with Barbarians

Once vilified in CD2 as stupid stereotypical unfriendly players (how fun, look at what people say about bowazons now), the surviving Babas on the Realms are now either smart players, or uber-gear stupid players. Try to find the first variety.

A good party barb will use lots of Warcries, and will generally be a top-knotch tank. If you see someone mindlessly Whirlwinding through hordes of monsters, you have found the other kind of barb. Blech.

As usual, use FA to help a barb survive. A party-friendly barb will often have high level Battle Orders (which increases Life, Mana, and Stamina totals by a huge amount), and will often sport a very high-level Berserk that will provide a lot of help against those pesky PI bosses. Barbs are generally more solid than Spearazons, so they usually won't mind you spamming MS all over the screen.

Babas aren't immortal, though. Most of them are very vulnerable to specific boss combos. The always popular MSLEBs are often a pain for them. With your Valk and Decoy, you are sometimes better equipped than the Babas to deal with those. Offer your help if this is the case. Two very bad things to do against MSLEBs are Slow Missiles (which makes bugged invisible bolts) and Strafe (which releases a very large amount of sparks at one).

Partying with Paladins

Paladins are the most party-friendly class in D2. Their auras can help their teammates in various ways, from increasing damage to resistances, mana regeneration... Good party paladins will have several auras to choose from, and will discuss which one(s) they should use with the party. Unless you are really starved for damage (for example if you can't leech enough), it is considered good form to let the other classes have the first pick of auras (necros and sorcs are known to be more fond of Meditation than of Fanaticism, for example).

If the paladin uses a Combat aura, know what it does! Few paladins use Might (because A2 Mercs supply it nicely). Some are still using Concentration (high damage boost, high range, switch to GA/MS/Strafe for those), or Conviction (decreases Monster Defense and Resistances, which means using FA and Immolation a lot), but most use Fanaticism (nice damage and AR boost, speed boost, use physical skills a lot). The downside to Fanaticism is that it has a very low range, so you should stay near your friendly paladin.

Paladins generally make OK tanks, although they often have much lower life than barbarians (this is somewhat made up for by their mastery of shields). Some paladin variants ("Brickadins") are very well equipped to deal with the nasty MSLEBs, CELEBs... and will say so. Let them do it, since they generally know what they are doing.

Partying with Necromancers

One generic tip when playing partied with Necromancers: don't use FA. Please don't. Most Necromancers (unless you happen to meet the random Poison Dagger / Poison Nova variant guy) depend on corpses in one way or another, be it to use Corpse Explosion or to Revive them. FA deprives them of their most basic resource. How would you feel if some necromancer stole all the arrows from the ground and you couldn't restock them at a merchant?

Good Necromancers are a great party asset: they will know how many Revives to use in order to provide good protection, they will make ample use of those excellent AI Curses (Terror, Confuse...), and they will probably use Amplify Damage a lot in order to boost your physical damage. Bowazons and Necromancers team well together, because the bowazon usually can deal significant physical damage, allowing the Necromancer to start the "CE Chain Reaction".

Bad party Necromancers never quite caught up with the realities of LoD, and will insist on using Iron Maiden. A new breed of bad party necro will insist on using only Lower Resists even without sorceresses around, and will mindlessly spam their pitiful damage Bone Spirit. For about 12 seconds before they run out of mana, of course.

Partying with Sorceresses

Well, you wonder where all those old WW barbs of CD2 went when LoD came out? Look no further (well, actually, many of them are now playing bowazons). Once a very fun and challenging class to play (a bit like bowazons before 1.04), Sorceresses are back for revenge, complete with graphical-heavy supa-powerful spells. Who needs a party when your Firewall does 10,000 damage per second?

Seriously, there are still lots of good party sorceresses on the Realms. They are a great asset, and will usually use a variety of spells to deal with specific threats. Like bowazons, sorceresses fight best against large crowds of monsters. A good sorceress will advance with the rest of the team, and use Teleport for scout/retreat tactics. She will make good use of Static Field (still a great spell, and graphical lag friendly), coupled with effective high level spells. Pay attention to her fighting style, and help by providing distraction/backup (Valk, Decoy, FA...). Sorceresses are very fragile, since they don't have any leech.

Bad sorceresses generally don't pay attention to the enemies' immunities, and will provide some great fun when using level 35 Charged Bolt or Nova against MSLEBs, for example. Another common tactic of the bad party sorc is teleporting far ahead of the team, then bringing back unmanageable amounts of enemies.

Partying with Assassins

There are two main varieties of Assassins encountered, Trappers and Martial Artists. Trappers generally don't need much help, as they feature excellent crowd control and crowd killing skills. If they use Death Sentry (many of them do), you may want to stop using FA, as, like Necromancers, they rely on corpses to power-up their main skill.

Martial Artists are a bit like spearazons, in that they are often first line fighters with not much life. They have much better crowd control than spearazons, though (the third Phoenix Strike charge-up being an excellent crowd-control skill). When playing with a Martial Artist, please remove your Knockback items if you can: MA assassins often rely on a very careful timing that does not mix well with monsters flying back and forth.

Assassins have two annoying problems attached to them, and a good party assassin is often one who will be aware of those problems. First is their main minion, the unbearable Shadow Master. This minion will, generally at the worst time possible, use the infamous Mind Blast on enemies. There is a very bad bug/feature with this skill (as well as with the paladin's Conversion skill): converted enemies count as being part of your party, and as such get the benefits of paladin/merc auras, druid spirits... The problematic part comes when the Mind Blast effect wears off: there is a handful of seconds where monsters revert to their basic AI (which is attacking your party) but keep all the benefits of the auras they gained. Finding yourself in the middle of a pack of Might Fanatic monsters is no fun at all. Good party sins will probably restrain themselves from using Shadow Master a lot. The other annoying skill is Cloak of Shadows, which turns the screen dark for everyone in the party. This is not as dangerous as Mind Blast, but can be annoying at times. Of course, Shadow Masters just love casting Cloak of Shadows. :)

Partying with Druids

Druids also come mostly in two flavours: the variant Elementalist, and the mainstream Shapeshifter (2 sub-flavors here, Werewolf and Werebear).

Druids are often great party assets. Since the Elemental tree is so weak, most Elementalists have an excellent understanding of the game to try such a difficult build, and as such are very talented players. Try to use your crowd control abilities to their full extent for them, so they can maximize what little killing power they have.

While more mainstream builds, the two shapeshifters are very potent and party friendly builds: the bear is an excellent tank, with loads of life and the stunning Shockwave skill (pun intended). This skill is one of the best crowd control skills in the game. When partying with a Werebear, you should help him deal with one target at a time (they don't have any multi-target attacks, except Shockwave which does pitiful damage). Werewolves are a different kind of front-line fighters, able to disable many enemies quickly (using the incredible Fury skill), but lacking the extra life and safety the Bear provides. Think of Werewolves as extra-fast Fending Spearazons, and you won't fall too far from the truth.

Nearly all druids use one spirit or another. Of the 3 different spirits, the 2 best ones are of course Oak Sage (which provides a huge life boost to the entire party) and Heart of Wolverine, which gives extra AR and Damage. Not many druids invest in both spirits, so they probably won't give you much choice. :) Both are good for you, although HoW is probably a bit better suited to a bowazon style. The last spirit (Spirit of Barbs) is a very underpowered version of the Iron Maiden curse and the Thorns aura, and is very seldom seen.

Summing up

As a general rule of thumb, a bowazon has two main roles in a party: provide artillery support (in the form of large amounts of damage on a variety of targets), and provide backup fire (generally using FA so the front line can have a break, or the weak back line characters can escape unwanted monsters). The ability of a bowazon to control the flow of battle (mostly using items) is only matched by necromancers and perhaps some barbarians (those using Grim Ward, Taunt and War Cry) and assassins.

You should remember your place: at the rear. Running in front of your party will make the life of your tanks very difficult, as they will have both to help you and try to maintain the front line.

Crowd Control modifiers (mostly the infamous Knockback), as well as FA can be very detrimental to your party: KB removes the enemies from the front line fighters' reach (and prevents your friendly tanks from leeching life/mana), and FA deprives Assassins and Necromancers (and to some extent, Elementalists) from much needed corpses. If you are in a good party, you can safely give up KB and FA, as the value provided by party members able to do their job will more than make up for it.

Corwin v1.2, 4/15/03

Bowazon Guide cont'd:
Part 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

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