THE BASIN

Welcome to my little personal mess. Thanks for making it this far.

Hotkeys

I've often been asked what hotkeys I use on my bowazons. While Hotkeys are a very personal thing, here are a few tips I think work for everyone:

Don't use the default F1-F8 (and more in LoD) Function keys: those are too far away from your natural position (which is near the space bar for clearing screen, Alt to check items, and Shift to stand still and shoot).
Keep a Hotkey handy for Town Portal. Trust me on this.
Try to have as many common Hotkeys as possible between your various characters. This way, you will start developing an instinct for switching offensive/defensive skills.
I generally use only one skill on the Left Mouse Button (LMB), and keep all my other skills on the Right Mouse Button (RMB). I usually choose GA or Ice Arrow for a good LMB attack.
Practice, practice, practice. Once you get a setup you are comfortable with, stick with it on as many characters as you can.
My usual bowazon setup is made of two parts: the first part is accessed by the Z, X, C, V keys, and consists of Offensive skills (Strafe, FA, Immolation...), which vary from character to character. The second part is accessed with the A, S, D and F keys, and is always the following defensive sequence: A = Slow Missiles, S = Decoy, D = Valkyrie, F = Town Portal. Thus, all my skills are available without moving my left hand, which saved my bowazons' lives more times than I can remember. Such a setup makes casting a FA round followed by a Valk and a Decoy before returning to MS or Strafe for the killing a very easy feat to perform.

Hirelings, or Mercs are an excellent, and quite overpowered feature of LoD. Back in CD2, mercs were usually cannon fodder for act bosses (many, many Act 2 mercenaries died at the end of Duriel in those dark days).

Mercs come in 4 varieties:

The Act 1 Rogues. Those are not that useful for a bowazon, because the weak ranged attack they sport cannot match the versatility of a bowazon's arsenal. The only interesting part with them (for a bowazon, anyway) is the intriguing bug/feature/Easter Egg that can be obtained by stacking items giving bonuses to skills (either generic +skills or +amazon skills only) on them: after +3, this changes their attack in the most drastic ways. For example, stacking +3 to all skills on a Rogue Merc will give her a short range but extremely powerful Lightning Attack. Rogues have good AI, and try to avoid close fights, meaning they survive pretty well.
The A2 Desert Guards. The best mercs in LoD, period. Those guy can use Polearms and Spears, and get both the Amazon Jab skill as well as one Paladin aura. This aura depends on the difficulty the Merc was hired (Normal and Hell give the same auras, Nightmare is different), as well as on his type (there are 3 different Desert Guard types: Offensive, Defensive, and Combat). Combat/Normal or Hell gives the Prayer aura (which replenishes life), not very useful to a bowazon, unless you are low on life leech, or already planning to use many Life Regen items (think mageazon). Combat/Nightmare give Thorns (returns damage taken), not useful either as you don't want to get hit anyway. Defense/Normal or Hell is Defiance, which boosts your Defense Rating (yoopie! another useless property for a bowie!). Defense/Nightmare is much better, giving Holy Freeze (slows down all enemies, even Cold Immunes). Offense/Normal or Hell give Blessed Aim (large AR increase), which is nice but not great, as AR is generally not a problem for SC bowazons. The last and best merc is Offense/Nightmare, giving the incredibly powerful Might Aura, for a very large Damage boost. Probably the best choice for a bowazon. Keeping your Desert Guard alive is hard, as he tends to throw himself in the middle of enemy packs, but it's worth the effort.
Act 3 Ironwolves are weak mages, casting spells in one of the 3 different elements: Fire, Cold, or Lightning. While they could potentially be useful if you were starved of elemental damage, the fact is that their spells are not very powerful, and that those hirelings die somewhat easily when challenged (because of lack of leech and low life amount, although their AI keeps them out of trouble most of time). There are expert bowazons who like them a lot (especially the Ice variety) because they are quite easy to level as they generally stay out of melee range and can catch monsters you missed easily, so as always you may want to try them first hand.
Act 5 Barbarians are very good tanks, and as such would be very useful if you didn't have a Valk. The nice damage they can provide is usually not worth giving up a Might Merc.

As mercenaries require much cash to resurrect, training (leveling) them and equipping them well is mandatory if you don't want to find yourself going broke because of resurrection costs very quickly. On the other hand, you don't want to spend all your trading resources on equipping your mercenary so here are a few very low price items that will greatly help you keeping your best bud alive:

Tal's Fugly. Since mercenaries' graphics do not change when you equip them, the only balancing factor of Tal's Fugly Mask (its ugliness) is gone. While mercs don't need mana leech, there is still life leech, resist all, and a huge life boost. This one is one of the best choices if not the best choice, and people generally give those away.
Crown of Thieves: huge life leech here, so it's obviously very helpful. The rest of the stats aren't bad either.
Spirit Shroud: +1 to all skills and Cannot be Frozen are the 2 best mods here.
Duriel's Shell: the best affordable merc armor (I'm not talking Shaftstop or Arkaine's Valor for mercs here), with high resists, a nice Str boost, Cannot be Frozen, scaling defense and life. An etheral one comes into the range of elite armor easily.
Honor Runeword melee weapons: Amn+El+Ith+Tir+Sol. All runes are very easy to find, and the runeword bonuses are nothing to scoff at: good damage, +1 to all skills, life leech... I generally put this in etheral weapons, since merc's equipment never loses durability. For your Act2 mercs, a little trick: when socketed at Lazruk with a quest reward, all weapons of the following types automatically gain 5 sockets: Treshers, Mancatchers, Cryptic Axes.
Cliffkiller: for a Rogue Hireling, this is an excellent and very low-price weapon, with +2 to skills, Knockback, nice damage, and some life boost.

To level your mercenary easily, the Halls of Pain are an excellent place to go. If you have a high Cold duration, and advance carefully, then leveling your Merc in the Cow Level is another excellent solution.

Trading

Doh, welcome to the bad part of D2. While trading should have been an enjoyable part of the game, the fact is that even the MtG craze is nothing, nothing at all when compared to what goes on the D2 trading scene.

Duping. The duplication of items (either using in-game bugs or using external hacking programs) is a speciality of D2. There are some dupe detectors running on the Realms, so the nice elite unique you traded a lot for may simply disappear, leaving you naked.
Hacking: between bugged/morphed items, "Ith" items (runewords with their runes removed and replaced by (duped) powerful jewels and/or runes) but still keeping the huge runeword bonuses, and other monstrosities, the hackers are running with gear able to remove the whole Lut Gholein city from the face of Sanctuary in a heartbeat. Never trade for a hacked/bugged item, for two reasons. First, it ruins the game both for you and for others, and second, those items may very well disappear if Blizzard decides to deal with them one day.
Bots: automated programs doing either merchants shopping ("Shopbot") or boss runs ("Pindlebot") are also responsible for a good part of the current state of the "jokeonomy". While items obtained with such programs are considered "legit" by the servers (ie they won't disappear on you), truly legit players frown upon the practice of having a program do your MF for yourself.
Ebay: while selling or buying in-game items for real world money is something that should be left to each player's conscience, the fact is that the appeal of quick and easy money is a huge incentive for the industry of hackers.
Scammers: "a sucker is borned every minute". Well, there are tons of people in the various trading channels who are ready to take advantage of the good faith of other traders. Those low-life punks have a variety of tricks up their sleeves to get your items without giving what they promised in exchange.

Now that this rant is out of the way, here are a few tips for beginner traders.

Good places to trade are the various Trade Channels in Battle.net (dangerous because of the huge amount of scams and duped/bugged items), the DiabloII.net marketplace, or the forums of some sites (diabloii.net has some good trading forums). While the best deals are often done on the Trade channels, starting trading on a forum/marketplace is probably best for beginners, as they can get a feel for the various values, and run much less risk of encountering a scammer.
Caveat Emptor. "Buyer Beware!" is a very, very true saying in D2. As a rule of thumb, if it looks too good to be true, then it probably is. The most incredible deals either turn out to be elaborate scam attempts, or someone giving duped items. While botting has made the costs incredibly low, there are still some resources that are very expensive, and seeing those for low prices is generally the trademark of a scammer. Also do remember that many high-end items are duped and may disappear at any time.
The Stone of Jordan or SoJ. This is the de facto currency on the Realms. You can convert items to SoJs (depending on the value of those items, there are very few items worth several SoJs, most of them being Elite uniques), and you can later "buy" items using SoJs.
To get some good "starting" stuff (the quotes are there because some of this "starting" stuff is indeed end-game gear), do not bother with MFing (hard without specialized items anyway): try to gather some crafting materials (perfect gems, runes, bad jewels...). Many high-end players do tons of MFing and crafting, and will be very happy to trade some of their gear for a good supply of crafting materials. The same is true for chipped gems, which can be used to transmute swords in the Horadric Cube. Gems are literally all over the place in LoD, so they make a great source of income. Depending on the current rate, you may even get one SoJ for a full inventory of gems. Finding gems takes some time, but is a guaranteed source of income. MFing may have better rewards, but is never guaranteed. You can think of gathering gems and crafting supplies as working, while MFing is playing the lottery.

FAQs

"FAQs are asked frequently. Get over it."
- from the Laws of Usenet

Here are a few Frequently Asked Questions seen often on the AB Bowazon forum.

Q: Which is better, Multishot or Strafe?

A: Which is better, the Fork or the Spoon? Seriously, both skills are so different the answer is really evident: it depends. Generally, you should use both. Use MS for medium-density crowds coming from a single direction (high-density crowds should get FA if you have it at a good level), and use Strafe for scattered targets coming from various directions. MS deals less damage per target, but is fired at once, while Strafe will be more efficient for small packs, because each arrow will deal more damage. Both work well with Pierce, and require an AR check.

Q: What should I socket my [Insert Bow Name] with?

A: First, check IAS breakpoints. When socketing a bow (a definitive action, so I understand your concern), the first thing to do should be to check the various IAS breakpoints for this class of weapon, and compare them to the amount of IAS you have in your gear. If you are near a breakpoint, then a Jewel of Fervor (15% IAS, better with another mod) or a Shael rune (20% IAS) are probably what gives you the best bang for your buck, as jumping an IAS breakpoint translates into better damage over time, better crowd control, and increased safety. This is very true even for non-speedazons. If you are already satisfied with your current speed, pay attention to the fallacious lure of Enhanced Damage jewels and Ohm runes: Enhanced Damage when socketed on a weapon adds to the base damage. So while socketing your Windforce or Buriza with an Ohm rune, the extra damage gained (50% of 10-68 for example when Ohming a WF only makes 5-34 extra damage, quite pitiful when compared to the hundreds of damage points a Windforce does at high levels). Adding a Crowd Control effect (Cham, Sur, Nef...) is a good option, but keep in mind that Freeze doesn't work that well on bows, that Blinds override other curses, and that sometimes you would be better without Knockback (when partied).

Q: Please rate my bow! I can't kill anything with this damn bow!

A: I can't rate your bow. The trade values are always changing, so any advice given here would be obsolete by the time this guide actually gets published. About the efficiency of your bow, you should evaluate it in your strategy. If you find yourself lacking mana leech to power-up your high level skills, then perhaps a bow with less skills but more physical damage or extra mana leech would work better? If monsters always manage to engage you at close range, perhaps a faster bow would help you? If you don't seem to be able to kill the monsters, but can't afford a more damaging bow, perhaps you should try to improve your style, and learn to work with other skills?

Q: How does this Speed thing work again?

A: This is quite simple. You have to remember that your speed comes from both the inner speed of your weapon (i.e. its base type), and from the various IAS modifiers (on the weapon, with a Shael rune, with specific items, Fervor jewels...). The IAS modifiers are subject to heavy diminishing returns, which means that reaching the same speed as a fast bow with a slower bow will require higher and higher amounts of IAS, or will even be impossible. For example, with a -10 Base Bow (the fastest bows), you will need 75 IAS on your items to reach 8/2, while a 10 Base Bow (the slowest bows) will require 142 IAS to reach the same speed.

Q: What's this 8/2, 10/3 thing?

A: This is the standard speed notation. This notation was introduced by DoubleTrouble a long time ago. The first number refers to the number of frames (Diablo2 uses 25 frames per seconds, although your graphical engine may run faster or slower) between 2 normal attacks (or between 2 attacks using anything but Strafe). The second number is the number of frames between 2 successive arrows (except the first one, which is fired at normal attack speed) when using the Strafe skill. Thus, a bow running at 9/2 for example will have 9 frames between 2 normal attacks (or MS, FA...), and 2 frames each for the 2nd to 10th arrows in a Strafe round.

Credits

I think I should thank AK404 first and foremost, for being the main contributor to the bowazon science on Battle.net, as well as for being both an incredibly talented writer with an excellent sense of humor, and a damn good and damn fun person to play with.

Thanks to DoubleTrouble, both for bringing the speedazon out of infancy, as well as for being our not-so-silent conscience when LoD arrived.

Thanks to ZenDragon for his incredible Bow Bible, and for herding the cats.

Thanks to TPJ for building the damn best D2 guild on the Internet. Nuff said.

Thanks to Sadira for continuing TPJ's hard work.

Thanks to Vehementi for starting the path with his "Bowazon 101."

Thanks to the Lurker Lounge gurus for their dedication in explaining to us the finest details of the game (Blizzard should really hire you, guys), and for pushing the boundaries of character building every day: Bolty, Trucidation, Jarulf, Spirea, Sirian, Elric of Grans...

Thanks to the DiabloII.net team for the hard work they put into their site, and for bringing us the marketplace.

Thanks to Bartek of the Horadrim Library for a very well made site, both in content, layout, and ideas.

Thanks of course to the contributors of the Amazon Basin (Evap, Chevalis, Kevinsteele, SiegZon, FrigidWoman, Botdude, Zitta, IceMage, Loki, Oprah, HazedHaze, Shadguy, WuTangYang... and all the others), for listening to my endless rants and silly ideas from nearly two years now. Yoo Foo Foo!

Thanks to the tons of brainless cow-killing Damage Reduction/Buriza do Kyanon amazons on Battle.net for helping me feel better every time I enter a public game ("BUT IT OWNZ USE AMA!!!"). Special thanks to all the people who took from their precious time to explain to me my vamp or dinozon "sUx0r3d" and that I should use a "r3Al b0W", while I was outkilling them two monsters for every one they killed.

Legal Stuff

All trademarks quoted into this document are property of their respective owners (Blizzard Corporation mostly).

This guide can only be found on the Amazon Basin Diablo2 guild site, on my personal Amazon Basin web page, and on one of the following sites if they chose to publish it: DiabloII.net, Gamefaqs, LurkerLounge, Horadrim Library. If you see this guide or excerpts of this guide anywhere else, please contact me at corwinbrute@theamazonbasin.com.

If you are interested in hosting this guide, please contact me through email. All content of this guide is copyrighted by me. You may use it or print it for personal use only, and may not add any part of this guide to your own site/Diablo2 guide without receiving written or email permission from me.

Versions

1.0: first release of the guide.
1.1 (01/24/2003): correction of a variety of typos/misconceptions after proofreading from the AB Bowazon crowd.
1.2 (04/15/03): release of web-based guide, HTMLing done by Grimborn of the Amazon Basin.

Corwin v1.2, 4/15/03

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

The Amazon Basin Community