Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
— Siddhartha Gautama Buddha
First of all, let's start with a quick reading of the amazon section of Arreat Summit. That'll save me a little bit of trouble.
The most important part of enjoying your character is knowing your character. Knowing your character begins with knowing what your character used to be, and how it got to where it is now. We'll start with attributes and skills, as you'll probably spend more time figuring out what your personal preferences for these are long after you've obtained what you believe is the "best gear possible."
Before v1.10, there were two classes of characters: those who were physical combat class ("warriors") and those who were the magical combat class ("casters"). Due to the nature of skills that worked off of a warrior's weapon damage, they were mostly equipment and attribute point-dependent: for every level (or better equipment) a warrior gained, he not only gained a skill point, but attribute points that make his active direct damage skills even stronger. In the long run, warriors eventually ran into a surplus of skill points because sooner or later, physical damage skills grew more effective with better stats and equipment. Casters had the opposite problem: a surplus of attribute points and a shortage of skill points. These points were the only way for them to make any of their skills stronger. A clvl-30 and clvl-70 necromancer's slvl-1 Bone Spirit were exactly the same because nothing but skill points increase damage. By contrast, the difference between a clvl-30 and a clvl-70 bowazon's slvl-1 Guided Arrow was enormous due to Dexterity modifiers and better weaponry.
That was the way Diablo II has always been in a nutshell. Version 1.10 changed all that with the introduction of synergies. Synergies are a sort of internal passive bonus almost every skill has on another skill or set of skills — this was done because a well-rounded character with access to all three trees would use up to 20 points on nothing but prerequisite skills which would be considered "wasted," with only a few skills out of those 30 being considered "real skills" that were viable in Hell. What synergies attempt to do is ensure that no skill investment is considered a waste because any skill with planned obsolescence or limited usage will have a passive bonus on its successors or a completely different skill, so that a character that may have once been slow to develop, like the sorceress, now has more freedom in allocating her skill points and as a result, much more freedom in her game play, advancing a bit faster than she would have before. For most characters, the introduction of synergies is a groundbreaking and much-needed change: the paladin is a prime example, as almost every aura is cross-synergized with another and every combat skill is synergized with another combat skill and/or an aura.
The bowazon herself gets a few synergies, but these don't change the way she's always been played…with one notable exception. Quite frankly, the bowazon doesn't need them (spearazon do, but that's neither here nor there). For the most part, synergies have slightly rebalanced the characters, but the biggest changes are the ways monsters and boss packs have been handled: warriors are no longer the offensive powerhouses they used to be. Oh, they're capability for damage is even better than it's ever been, but with boss packs sharing the properties of their unique leaders, monster levels constantly at the 80s, leech penalties, damage reduction caps, doubled monster hit points, and oh-so-wonderful bugs with monster damage, melee is truly lethal in v1.10; as a result, responsibilities and roles are constantly shifting, with ranged characters and casters simultaneously taking up support, indirect and direct damage-dealing responsibilities and using their minions as primary defense while melee characters move in and out of support and primary offensive and defensive roles.
As explained in the introduction, the bowazon's role has dramatically changed: she is no longer the game's dominant source of ranged damage — that honor goes to the sorceress and necromancer. However, she is still the dominant physical ranged attacker with the most effective freezing skill in the game and one of the best minions available. She's gone back to her roots as a support unit, picking off weaker enemies that might cause trouble for melee character intent on high-priority targets, freezing enemies that she can't kill herself but are within the reach of melee fighters, and using her valkyrie and decoy as quick sources of defense. The bowazon herself never actually participates in combat — that what her arrows are for. Because of the way the amazon has been designed, then, and with the nature of ranged combat, the bowazon can take certain liberties with her attribute points: for a warrior, vitality isn't that important to her. Defense in the form of armor doesn't matter. Damage takes a back seat to speed. Her most important skill bonuses are those that don't cause damage. She's a sort of paradox, an offensive character who must play defensively to suceed, a support unit who happens to be self-sustaining, a character who thrives on passives but doesn't need synergies, and a physical damage character whose best attack happens to be elemental. If that sounds weird: this guide will attempt to explain why it isn't.
We'll start with attributes and the bowazon's unusual attribute distribution.
last updated: Tuesday, December 23, 2003 — version 0.10
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