With the sole exception of Magic Find (not discussed here), all secondary stats can be covered under one of two classifications: Offensive and Defensive.
In accordance with the bowazon stereotype as a glass cannon, it's likely that you will spend more time and resources developing the offensive side of your bowazon, even if your bowazon is a Hardcore character.
The absolutely complete guide to how weapon damage in inflicted can be found at Tommi Gustafsson's Weapon Damage Calculations. This is merely a summary.
Damage is your most important secondary attribute. Unless your bowazon is in Hardcore or in her upper levels, go for the capability to cause more damage, either direct or indirect, above all else: upgrading damage — even just a little bit — allows your character to keep pace with the increased difficulty of the game. The best way to raise damage is by selecting a bow with scaling damage per clvl, meaning that it gets better as your bowazon gains levels with a reduced need to spend points in dexterity. Not much needs to be said about damage, other than this: damage is your most important secondary attribute. Damage is your most important secondary attribute. Damage is your most important secondary attribute.
total damage = physical damage + elemental damage
Average physical damage is defined as:
For normal arrows, bonus = 0; Multiple Shot, bonus = (-25%); for Strafe and Guided Arrow, bonus = the +damage%, represented as a fraction (i.e. 35% bonus is 0.35)or 35/100; if you're under the effects of the Might, Concentration and Fanaticism auras or Heart of Wolverine spirit, increase the value of bonus by adding +damage%/100 for each aura.
— Icemage
Enhanced damage can obviously be found on weapons, but +10-30% enhanced damage can also be found on rare circlets and jewels. Magical ruby jewels have +31-40% as a prefix. The Ohm rune gives 50% enhanced damage when inserted into a weapon.
Rare jewelry can have +1-4 maximum damage. Rare weapons can have +1-20 maximum damage, with +21-63 maximum damage being reserved for magical weapons. In LOD, small charms have +1-3 maximum damage as a prefix, +1 as a suffix; large charms, +4-6 as a prefix, +1-2 as a suffix; grand charms, +7-10 as a prefix, +3-4 maximum damage as a suffix. Rare jewels can have +1-18 maximum damage; magical jewels, +11-30. The Ith rune gives +9 maximum damage when inserted into a weapon.
Rare jewelry and circlets can have +1-8 minimum damage; magical jewelry and circlets can have up to +9-14. Rare weapons can have +1-20 minimum damage. In LOD, small charms have +1 minimum damage as a prefix; large charms, +1-2; grand charms, +1-3 minimum damage. Rare jewels can have +1-19 minimum damage. The Sol rune gives +9 minimum damage when inserted into a weapon.
Elemental damage isn't affected by physical damage modifiers (Critical Strike, dexterity, Guided Arrow, Strafe, Might, Concentration, Fanaticism, Heart of the Wolverine, Amplify Damage), so most of the time, elemental bows aren't important to the amazon. A bow with 723 poison damage is a bow with 723 poison damage, not 723 physical damage, so no matter how much dexterity you have, the bow will always carry the same range of damage. Thus, a high damage elemental bow with low requirements (like a short bow, for example) would be just as good as a high damage elemental bow with high requirements (like a hydra bow).
Elemental damage takes priority over physical damage during two phases of the game. The first is the very beginning, when your bowazon doesn't have enough levels to handle the higher enhanced damage affixes: because she doesn't cause enough damage to leech back significant amounts of life or mana, elemental damage is just as good, if not better, than physical damage. As soon as she's able to handle bows with 70 or more maximum damage, physical damage takes the fore. The other place where elemental damage carries priority over physical damage is at the very end of the game in Hell difficulty with its numerous physical resistant and immune monsters. A bow with 3-800 lightning can do more damage against a physical immune monster than a normal bow. The different sorts of elemental damage are as follows:
Cold has the least damage of all the elements, but is the most important to the bowazon. Its primary importance is slowing down monsters who are vulnerable to it; in addition, cold plays an important part when considering interchangeable and cumulative chill-freeze times (explained under Cold Arrow Skills): this is an old principle from v.03 that still holds water even in LOD. The most cold damage a rare bow can have is 1-4; a magical hibernal bow of the icicle can have as much as 46-144; a magical jewel of the glacier can have as much as 5-15. The king of cold damage bows is the Buriza-do Kyanon ballista with 32-196 cold damage.
Fire is the middle ground of all elements: it has a good range of immediate damage, but at the same time is the most resisted of the elements. It has no special properties. The most fire damage a rare bow can have is 9-20; a magical condensing bow of incineration, 179-260; a rare jewel of burning can have as much as 25-50. A good fire damage bow to use would be the Kuko Shakaku cedar bow with 40-180 fire damage.
Lightning has the highest instant maximum damage of the elements, but the lowest minimum damage. The problems with minimum damage can be circumvented with multiple sources of lightning, but this will not solve the problem of its wild range of damage. The most lightning damage a rare bow can have is 6-120; a magical shocking bow of storms, 7-600; a rare jewel of thunder, 1-100.
Poison is complicated, which is why there're so many links to it: it can cause more damage than any of the elements, but its damage is gradual rather than instant. For the general user, even a little poison is enough, as it prevents monsters from regenerating and if one counts potential life lost as damage, then poison becomes very powerful. For example, an urdar in an eight-player game in Hell difficulty regenerates 300 life per second. If it is poisoned for 10 seconds, it's been prevented from regaining 3,000 potential hit points. Against ten urdar, ten seconds of poison equal to ~30,000 life lost due to lack of regeneration.
For the more specialized user, however, poison is a way of life, as enough poison over time can take nearly any monster down (explained in more detail from more specialized guides). Poison from ranged weaponry is special: poison damage and duration from multiple sources are added up, so extremely powerful poison can last a while when coming from a ranged weapon. For example, a perfect emerald causes 100 poison damage over 7 seconds: in a melee weapon, six yields 603 poison over 7 seconds, but in a ranged weapon, they would come to 3,618 poison over 42 seconds. The most poison a rare bow can have is 13-25 over 2 seconds; a magical pestilent bow of anthrax, 751 poison over 12 seconds; a jewel of envy, 20 poison over 2 seconds. For more information on poison, please refer to the Tao of Poison at diabloii.net or the Damage: Poison section of Spirea's Diablo II Resource. Calculators include the Tao of Poison's Poison Calculator at diabloii.net or Joel Falcou's Poison Calculator at the Phrozen Keep.
Non-elemental damage effects usually fall outside physical and elemental damage: non-elemental effects usually work equally well with either while being independent of both. Non-elemental effects include crushing blow, deadly strike, hit freezes target, knockback, open wounds, prevent monster heal, slows target and the ability to cast curses and spells upon striking a target.
Crushing Blow (re: "CB") does damage that is a fraction of the current life of the victim. That fraction varies depending on monster type; the chances of inflicting a crushing blow are cut in half for all missile weapons. For normal monsters, CB from a missile attack (such as a bow) will cut a monster's by 1/8 their base life. Against champions, uniques and super uniques, this is lowered to 1/16 their base life; players and hirelings have the lowest percentage, at only 1/20 their base life. Crushing blow is affected by physical resistance; physical immune monsters are unaffected by CB. Crushing blow has an absolute cap of 90%; additional amounts of CB are wasted.
While CB works wonders for characters with low physical damage, a bowazon can rely less and less on CB as she obtains bows with increasingly heavier damage. She simply does too much damage too fast to even consider CB's low chances of going off and (relatively) lower damage.
Crushing blow is offered by Goblin Toe light plated boots (25%), Rattlecage gothic armor (25%), Gore Rider war boots (15%), Guillaume's Face winged helm (35%), Venom Grip demonhide gloves (5%) and the Ber rune (20%) when used in weapon. For more information, please refer to the Damage: Crushing Blow section of Spirea's Diablo II Resource and Special Effects: Crushing Blow from Tommi Gustafsson's Weapon Damage Calculations.
Deadly Strike is double damage. Though deadly strike is offers a more consistent chance of double physical damage than the Critical Strike skill alone, deadly strike and critical hit are mutually exclusive. A bowazon can't have both go off at the same time (re: quadruple damage); for this reason, a bowazon with a well-developed critical strike skill does not need a lot of deadly strike and vice-versa.
Deadly strike is offered by Gore Rider war boots (15%), Guillaume's Face winged helm (15%), Highlord's Wrath amulet (24-37%), Witchwild String short siege bow (39-99%), Widowmaker ward bow (33%), and the Lo rune (20%) when used in weapon.
Hit Freezes Target (re: "Freezing") is a modified version of freezing via cold damage; it paralyzes a target. How much damage a character can cause is irrelevant. The chances of freezing a target with a ranged attack are:
Knocks Target Back (re: "Knockback") isn't an effect that causes direct damage, but one that forces a positional change between the bowazon and her targets. Knockback is important to the bowazon, as only a ranged combat specialist could take fully exploit its nature. No other character in the game will find knockback useful all the time; they either don't need it, can't use it or find it detrimental to their playing style. A sensible bowazon would do well to use knockback since it increases the range between her and her target, leaving it unable to retaliate due to being knocked back three to four steps and stunned while it's being knocked back. So long as a target is being locked, it can't do anything, allowing a bowazon to adopt the offensive very quickly. Unlike other non-elemental effects, knockback generally can't be resisted, though act end bosses like Duriel are immune. Uniques and champions are rarely knocked back and frozen targets can't be knocked back until the freezing wears off.
Knockback is offered by Cleglaw's Pincer's chain gloves, Howltusk great helm, Horadric Hit Power gloves and the Nef rune when used in a weapon. For more information, please refer to Ms. Gentur's Knockback Bow Guide for more information. Knockback does work against other players but is discouraged in PvP.
Open Wounds is a modified version of poison damage; whatever percentage of open wounds is shown on a weapon, divide it by two: this is a chance of making a monster bleed uncontrollably. They lose health while bleeding. Open wounds lasts for four seconds and seems to be resisted by physical resistance, but monsters that are physical immune can be affected by open wounds. Otherwise, open wounds is simply too weak for the bowazon to consider using at higher difficulty levels. Open wounds is offered by Crow Caw tigulated armor (35%), Gore Rider war boots (10%), Riphook razor bow (30%), Toothrow sharktooth armor (40%) and the Um rune (25%) when used in weapon. For more information, please refer to the Damage: Open Wounds section of Spirea's Diablo II Resource.
Slows Target is a modified version of chill via cold damage; it slows down the target's movement and attack rate. This is not the same as a Holy Freeze aura: slows target will not slow down animation, casting or recovery speed. The maximum of slows target is 50%; any more than that is wasted. It has no fixed duration, but its effect on monsters are undone by a successful [counter] attack on the player. While this has limited applications in melee (since slowed targets can always counter a melee character), this has many possibilities for the bowazon, who can easily avoid counterattacks. Slows target is offered by Blackhorn's Face death mask (20%), Cleglaw's Pincers chain gloves (25%), Riphook razor bow (30%) and Nosferatu's Coil vampirefang belt (10%).
Good marksmanship is vital; Attack Rating is your second most important secondary statistic and since you'll be using dexterity to raise it, Attack Rating often goes hand-in-hand with damage. Make sure your bowazon always has at least an 80~89% chance to hit your target. Penetrate is a great skill to have for this (refer to Passive/Magic: Offensive Skills), especially for HC, but another way to raise AR is by finding items with a scaling or percentile-based AR bonus, like a Hawkeye helm or the Goldstrike Arch gothic bow. The To-Hit formula used to determine the chances of an attacker hitting a defender is [in percentage form]:
Rare amulets and gloves can have up to +10-20 AR; rare circlets and rings, +101-120; rare weapons, +121-150; magical weapons can have up +151-450, as well as the Hawkeye prefix (+{1.5/clvl} AR). Rare helms, circlets, bows and crossbows can get the Visionary prefix (+{1/clvl}% AR) and rare weapons can get the Fool's prefix. Amethysts of varying degrees in weapons give +40-150 AR; diamonds of varying degrees in helms and armor give +20-100. In LOD, small charms have +1-36 AR as a prefix; large charms, +4-64; grand charms, +6-132 AR. Rare silver jewels have +41-60 AR; magical argent jewels, +61-100. An El rune gives +50 AR, +1 light radius; Eth, -25% Target Defense and Gul, a 20% bonus to AR, all when placed into weapons.
A more complete explanation of Attack Rating calculations can be found at Tommi Gustafsson's To Hit Calculations.
A special attribute, the only weapons of importance to the bowazon that have this are the elite uniques Eaglehorn Crusader Bow and Widowmaker Ward Bow, as well as the rune words Malice and Hand of Justice. It is also offered by the Jah rune when used in weapon. Ignore Target Defense (ITD) does exactly just that: it ignores a target's defense so that the bowazon always has a 95% chance to hit a monster of equal or lesser level (that is, the absolute maximum percentage any physical attack has of striking a target). Note that ITD does not work on other players, champions, uniques, or super uniques.
Leeching is the ability to drain life and mana via successful physical attack. Whatever percentage is listed is how much your bowazon can expect to drain from an target when she hits it. For example, a total of 10% life and 5% mana leech means that on a successful attack, a bowazon will drain 10% of that damage as life and 5% as mana. Thus, a 500 damage attack will drain back 50 life and 25 mana. For the bowazon, the ability to leech can be enhanced by attributes that directly increase her physical damage, like Critical Strike, Deadly Blow and Amplify Damage. Likewise, the ability to leech is hindered by physical resistance. A bowazon can't leech more life and mana percentages than a target has life: for example, if the same bowazon struck a 100 life zombie for 500 damage, she wouldn't drain back 50 life and 25 mana, but 10 life and 5 mana.
Leeching is absolutely mandatory for most bowazon builds, if not most warriors. It is imperative that you obtain leeching equipment as soon as possible: it is quite literally the lifeblood of any warrior, as high-level warriors can often drain five (or more) times their maximum life/mana with a couple of hits.
Jewelry is the most flexible way to obtain leech in terms of equipment; percentages should start at 3-7%, not counting other leech sources from armor, helmets, weapons, skulls or runes. Circlets, jewelry, gloves, and weapons are all capable of dual leech.
Be aware that after normal, there's a global penalty for leech in LOD; it's reduced to 50% in NM and to 33% in Hell. In addition, there will be targets and objects that have leech penalties on top of those global leech penalties. For example, monsters with a 100% leech penalty (you can't leech from them, ever) include catapults, skeletons, doors, barricades, towers, fire cannons, lightning spires, and physical immune monsters. Mephisto in NM and Hell cannot be leeched from.
Rare gloves can have up to 3% life and mana leech; rare weapons, 4-5% of both; rare circlets, 3-8% of both. Rare jewelry can have 3-8% life and mana leech. Skulls of varying degrees in weapons give 2-4% life leech with 1-3% mana leech. An Amn rune gives 7% life leech and a Vex rune gives 7% mana leech, both when placed into weapons.
The idea of using increased attack speed was conceptualized back in v.03 by Corwin Brute using some ideas from Golden Bow of the Amazon Basin, then perfected in CD2 by Double Trouble. The idea surrounding IAS rests on attacking groups of monsters so fast that they don't have time to retaliate. A bow with heavy damage may be passed up for a faster bow with a less damage, since the principle was that it was far better to cause a medium amount of damage with an insane rate of fire than it was to cause a lot of damage with a standard rate of fire. (This is no longer true in LOD; a bowazon can have speed and damage.) High IAS also means that non-elemental damage effects are spread even faster; while the first volley of arrows might not take targets down, they can get slowed, knocked back, stunned, crushed or cursed right away and with a high-speed rig, they'll stay that way.
Rare gloves and bows can have 10-20% IAS; the fastest ready-made bows in the game are the Goldstrike Arch gothic bow (50%), M'avina's Caster grand matron bow (40%), Witherstring hunter's bow, Rogue's Bow composite bow and Riphook razor bow (30%). While the Buriza-Do Kyanon ballista boasts 80% IAS, it's a crossbow, which is inherently slower than a bow. The unique Cat's Eye and Highlord's Wrath amulets both give 20% IAS; the unique Goldwrap heavy belt and Nosferatu's Coil vampirefang belt give 10% IAS. Magical jewels of fervor give 15% IAS and a Shael rune gives 20% IAS when placed into weapons.
Proponents of IAS have elevated IAS into an art form that takes up too much space and uses too much math to be used by this guide. For more information on speed classes & ratings, please refer to ZenDragon's Bow Bible v2.0, Double Trouble's Speedazon Guide and Speedshead Revisited — Part I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII. The following list of IAS breakpoints comes courtesy of ZenDragon's Bow Bible v2.0.
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Weapon: long battle, long siege, crusader bow; long war, gothic, hydra bow; reflex, ceremonial, grand matron bow 15/4: 0-4% Weapon: short, edge, spider bow 14/4: 0-5% Weapon: long, cedar, shadow bow; short battle, short siege, diamond bow; short war, rune, ward bow; stag, ashwood bow 13/3: 0-8% Weapon: hunter's, razor, blade bow; composite, double, great bow; matriarchal bow 12/3: 0-7% |
Weapon: heavy crossbow, ballista, colossus crossbow 22/6: 0-1% Weapon: crossbow, siege crossbow, gorgon crossbow 19/5: 0-6% Weapon: light crossbow, arbalest, pellet bow 18/5: 0-2% Weapon: repeating crossbow 14/4: 0-3% Weapon: chu-ko-nu, demon crossbow 12/3.5: 0-7% |
It should be noted that Classic Diablo II bowazons use the same IAS formula as LOD bowazons. In this case, the most IAS a classic bowazon may have is 80%: Twitchtroe studded leather (20%), Sigon's Gage + Sabot (30%), Goldwrap (10%) and a bow of alacrity (20%).
last updated: Friday, January 30, 2004 — version 0.10
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